Oriental cockroach
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[Photo] Blatta orientalis, Oriental cockroach. Original caption: Fig. 4. Common Cockroach (Blatta orientalis). a, female; b, male; c, side view of female; d, young. After Marlatt, Entom. Bull. 4, U.S. Dept. Agric. Project Gutenberg eText 16410. From Project Gutenberg's The Life-Story of Insects, by Geo. H. Carpenter http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16410

The Oriental cockroach (Blatta orientalis) is a large species of cockroach, measuring about 1 inch in length at maturity. It is dark brown to black in colour and has a glossy body. The female Oriental cockroach has a somewhat different appearance to the male, appearing to be wingless at casual glance but has two very short and useless wings just below its head. It has a wider body than the male. The male has long wings, which cover a majority of its body and are brown in colour, and has a more narrow body. Neither the male or female can fly, apparently. The female Oriental cockroach looks somewhat similar to the Florida woods cockroach, and may be mistaken for it.

The Oriental cockroach tends to travel somewhat more slowly than other species. They are often called waterbugs since they prefer dark, moist places. They can often be found around decaying organic matter, and in sewers, drains, damp basements, porches, and other damp locations. They can be found outside in bushes, under leaf groundcover, under mulch, and around other damp places outdoors.

In order to thrive, cockroaches need a place to hide. They prefer warm places and a relatively high humidity if possible; they also need a source of food/liquid. The optimum temperature for Oriental cockroaches is between 20???29 °C; thus they are rarely found outdoors in the U.K. Female Oriental cockroaches have vestigial tegmina (type of wing cover) and males have longer Tegmina.

Cockroaches are mainly nocturnal. Oriental cockroaches can be elusive in that a casual inspection of an infested dwelling during the day may show no signs of roach activity.

Signs of cockroaches are their Oothecae, which are “egg cases” containing up to 16 individual eggs in the case of Oriental cockroaches. These Oothecae are dropped by females and hatch on their own in about two months.

It is one of the reasons why Oriental cockroaches can be harder to get rid of compared to other roach species. Adults can be fairly easily killed by the application of residual insecticide, but of course insecticides can get washed away, and two months later there is another batch of fresh roaches hatching out. Roaches also leave fecal marks, which can vary depending on the amount of water supply available. When water is readily available, fecal marks look like lots of little flecks, when water is scarcer Oriental cockroaches produce fecal pellets similar to mice droppings Adult Oriental cockroaches have quite large fecal pellets which can be mistaken for mice droppings.

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