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Sticker of Trinidad bat-cave roach
Bug card No. 4430 of 4,939

Trinidad bat-cave roach

Eublaberus distanti
Name means: “named after William Lucas Distant; the name six-spotted comes from the six yellow spots on the young ones”

The Trinidad bat-cave roach is a big cockroach, about 6 centimetres long, that lives in caves full of bats. The young ones are dark brown with yellow spots along their sides. The grown-ups have wings, but they do not fly.

Lives in
Central and South America, from Guatemala to Peru and Brazil, and Trinidad and Tobago, mostly in caves
Length
6.4 cm (2.5 in)
Top speed
about 4.4 km/h (2.7 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting people.
What does it eat?
It eats almost any plant or animal leftovers it finds. In caves it eats the fresh droppings of bats that eat insects.
For real!Photo of Trinidad bat-cave roach
Picture by Ltshears. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Trinidad bat-cave roach about 6.4 cm long (2.5 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
as long as 2 toy building bricks in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 0.8 seconds

How big is Trinidad bat-cave roach compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

In one cave in Trinidad it waits buried in bat droppings with only its feelers sticking out. When the bats come home at about 3 in the morning, it climbs out to eat.

2

One single room of a cave in Trinidad held more than 43,000 of these cockroaches.

3

The young ones dig in the soil of the cave floor. When they are older, they climb up onto the rocky walls.

4

People keep it as food for pet lizards, frogs and tarantulas.

5

Its relatives can turn kitchen scraps into compost for the garden.

you asked

Most asked questions about Trinidad bat-cave roach

?How big is the Trinidad bat-cave roach?

About 6 centimetres long. The males are usually a little smaller than the females.

?Can the Trinidad bat-cave roach fly?

No. The grown-ups have wings, but they do not fly.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Eublaberus distanti
Group
Cockroaches and termites
Family
Blaberidae
Classification
Insecta > Blattodea > Blaberidae
Lives on
North America, South America
Also known as
Six-spotted cockroach, Four-spotted cockroach, Four-spot cockroach

Where the facts come from

  1. Eublaberus distanti (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Ltshears. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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