Decapitated Cockroaches

As a child I had the biggest fear of cockroaches, and I still do today. I would ask my parents tons of questions about them, and most of the time they would tell me they did not know the answers to them. One of my questions that I had is whether or not they are able to live when their decapitated.Basically, in my little mind I wondered if I ripped their heads off if they would still be able to run around or not. I had heard many different answers all telling me that yes they could live with their heads decapitated. I was extremely disturbed and even more afraid of them. I would imagine them running around without heads all over the place, and this scared the living daylights out of me. It still scares me thinking about it even today. During my read of the book, The Earwig's Tail, one of the chapters explains the mythology of this statement. Do cockroaches survive without their heads, and if so for how long? The book explains, "conviction that headless cockroaches of unspecified taxonomic identity can in fact survive for some period of time is persistent"(54). So through this chapter I realized my fear was in fact true, and this made it extremely hard for me to believe. I really do not like the fact that cockroaches can live without their heads! So my next question after learning this was for how long? My book explained that "sites specify nine days, although there are sites that specify one weed, two weeks, or several weeks"(55). So learning about all of this was really new news to me, but also very interesting. I could not believe this myth was in fact true, and it really creeped me out. On one website it stated "so without the brain, the body can still function in terms of very simple reactions," Tipping says. "They could stand, react to touch and move." This agreed with everything that I read in the book, but it also clarifies for me that they are limited to what they can do with a decapitated head. All in all this specific chapter in the book made me even more afraid of cockroaches!