Carboniferous period, so much so that it is occasionally called the Age of Cockroaches,

excellent models for neurobiology.

The ootheca, itself, is a marvelous construction, designed to offer the right amount of humidity and correct temperature for the fertilized eggs to develop. In the ootheca of the German cockroach, for instance, there is a little space left above the compartment for each egg that has a microscopic opening to the outer air.

The cockroach lives in our dark spaces, it constantly reminds us that other worlds exist at the margins of all our lives, worlds that obey drastically different orders from the one we know. Roaches construct a whole other reality, which they weave into our own. It is there under the sink, behind the refrigerator, inside the pipes, or just on the

This fat body, as it is called, is where much of the insect’s metabolism goes on, and where it stores precious nitrogens and other nutrients to have on hand in case food gets scarce.

It will seldom choose to rest in a space that’s more than 1/2-inch high, or less than 1/16-inch low (Berthold, 1967). One-quarter

is reasonable to posit that a cockroach may define home as anywhere there are a number of other cockroaches living comfortably.

Cockroaches represent the awful thoughts and feelings lying just under each of our surfaces, lurking just behind the facades we present to the world. We know that repressing these dark desires, rather than acknowledging them, can have disastrous consequences for human beings. Like these pools of darkness in our own selves, cockroaches cannot be

They predated dinosaurs by more than 150 million years, and humans by more than 300 million.