Science!

The world’s most widespread type of cockroach — a tiny, tan pest called the German cockroach — is at this moment crawling through countless buildings, hiding in the dark nooks of hotel rooms, restaurant kitchens and, if you’re unlucky, your own home — anywhere it can squeeze its little body and scavenge for the crumbs we drop.


Yet at the same time, when scientists search for its natural habitat, they can’t find it. It’s not native to any wilderness in Germany. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have any home in the wild anywhere in the world.


“Its origin has been a mystery,” said Edward Vargo, an urban entomologist at Texas A&M University. “These only exist in buildings.”


Now scientists who conducted a DNA analysis of the cockroach say they have solved that 250-year-old puzzle of where this ubiquitous bug is from.


The answer is us. We made the cockroach.

The species branched off from its closest cousin only about 2,100 years ago — a blink in evolutionary time — and is adapted entirely to living in dwellings alongside humans…..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/05/20/cockroach-spread-habitat-humans/