I found two stories for the American Cockroach Periplaneta americana . The first one was nice and easy to find out about, while the second one keeps circling in my head in an unsatisfying manner.
A large cockroach might come very close to a proper nightmare for most of us. Unpredictable, rapid movement, spiny legs, long antennae, wings to fly, and the image of infested food, smelly and complimented with creepy sounds. Pest managers, bug sprays and the vacuum cleaner are our weapons. And then this. Story number one, KFX. Kentucky fried… no.
Kangfuxin Ye is an extract from exactly this species of cockroach. This widely hated, large insect is part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine. Sure, cockroaches are known to be resilient, so for sure there are beneficial ingredients to be found. Don’t think the idea of making a concentrate from whole animals is an ancient relict. Researches still work on such procedures, for example with earthworms.
You can find patents describing the production of Kangfuxin online. Dried whole roaches are crushed and mixed with water. Keep the pulp for several hours at 70 degrees Celsius before filtration. Let the extract sit for a while, concentrate it, and mix with ethanol, glycerin and water. The product is known as Kangfuxin (“Rehabilitation new liquid”) and it’s supposed to help against inflammation. Guess what. The product boxes show often green leaves or trees, but no roaches. I wonder how many users know how Kangfuxin is made. That’s TCM. I guess millions of Chinese use it. I made an interesting observation while doing my research. When I poured outa bucket of water with a drowned cockroach in it, it took just a few seconds before more than 20 Oriental Latrine Flies (Chrysomya megacephala) feasted on it like piranhas. I have never seen flies going crazy over a dead insect before. Is the American Cockroach especially healthy? Kangfuxin for flies.
But do you think that’s the only use for cockroach based products? It isn’t. Barbara Demick published in the LA Times in 2013 a number of 100 cockroach farms in China. She interviewed Wang Xuhua, wo produced about 10 million cockroaches annually in 6 farms. In 2018 Woo and Seun published information about cockroach farming in the World Economic Forum. Accordingly a company called Gooddoctor produced 6 billion roaches. They are not only used for medicines, but also for cosmetics, to feed livestock like fish and chicken, and who knows what else. Farmers see the beauty of these beasts. They are easy to keep and breed, and feed on anything. Cockroach farming is the solution for kitchen waste. You turn it into valuable insect protein. It’s just the reputation that makes marketing to the broad community difficult. But after the kitchen waste fed roaches went through the stomach of a fish or chicken, it is so to say greenwashed. I find this process fascinating.
Cockroaches are closely related to termites, both are sharing the order Blattodea. There are more than 4000 species of cockroaches and over 3000 species of termites. Together with the order Mantodea, carrying approximately 2400 species of mantis, we have a colorful superorder, the Dictyoptera. Cockroaches are split into 9 families. Our species is a member of the Blattidae. The name cockroach developed from the Spanish word cucaracha. Cuca means caterpillar in Spanish, and it could be related to caca. We all poo, don’t we?
The second story. Common names are often confusing, because they are regional, old, just based on wrong assumptions, or lost in translation. P. americana might have several common names in different languages, probably a lot since this species lives all around the world. They weren’t native to America, but rather North Africa, and f4om there they conquered the world.
The common name Bombay Canary is omnipresent, and it’s source is easy to find. Bell and Adiyodis book “The American Cockroach” from 1981. That’s it. It’s a dead end if you want more background to the name. There’s no explanation in the book, they just mentioned it, and now it’s a copy and paste situation. I tried a lot to get the background story. Canaries, popular colorful singing birds and cockroaches don’t match. So is it sarcasm? Adult roaches can fly at least. But they don’t make a sound. Mumbai was called Bombay until 1995. I would guess not the locals, but some visitors, colonial maybe, gave it. The British? If not sarcasm, was there a serious reason, like the canaries indicating toxic gases in coal mines, would the Bombay Canary indicate unhealthy food in kitchens? Or was there even a tradition of keeping cockroaches in Bombay?
I asked in a Canary bird group on Facebook, and one member, I’ll call him Haider, had a valuable comment, for which I would like to thank him again. Rats in Barash, a port city in southern Iraq, have been called Bombay parrots. These were actually rats, but the authorities seem to have avoided calling them rats to keep the reputation of the port. Awesome story! So is Bombay canaries the officially used equivalent to Bombay parrots? Whitewashed unpopular residents?! It does sound better for sure!
Bringing both stories together, why don’t we call cockroach-based products canary-based?!
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