How Accurate Are These Animated Pests? — Part 2

Welcome to part 2 in our series on the analysis of animated pests! If you missed the first blog, you can check it out here. Today’s creepy-crawly is another unfortunately common and very real pest, but involved in a completely fantastical plot line. Roaches are already an antagonistic pest that causes a myriad of problems for anyone who has the misfortune of dealing with an infestation. They contaminate everything they touch, transmit dangerous diseases to nearby people, and reproduce at an alarming rate. As intimidating as all of this is, it would be even worse if the roaches were controlled by a sentient roach inside an insectoid-man-robot. Sound strangely specific? Don’t worry, it’s just a fictional plot that is centered on an already infamous real pest. Let’s take a closer look at this early episode of the popular superhero cartoon The Powerpuff Girls!

The Villainous Roach — The Powerpuff Girls

 

This one is a little different from the others, not only because the pest issue is more of a city-wide problem, but also because they work for a supervillain (naturally). In the first half of an episode entitled “Insect Inside,” a roach chases Bubbles around the house — and somehow keeps up with her high flight speed — before the Professor catches it in a jar and teaches the girls about the importance of insects. They release the roach into the night and assume that it will simply crawl away, but this dedicated roach instead rides on the top of a car to a nearby hotel and takes the elevator up to its desired floor without the other passengers noticing a sentient insect in their presence. The roach, who was assigned to spy on the Powerpuff Girls, reports its discovery that the superheroes will not squish any insects and therefore won’t ruin their plan for world domination. Roach Coach, the insectoid man leading all of the normal roaches, orders his army to swarm the city and overwhelm the population. After a spine-chilling scene where the roaches crawl all over everything in sight, the Powerpuff Girls strategically defeat them by using a giant jar and punching through the giant mass of roaches. Roach Coach actually falls to his “death” and the girls fly down to investigate, but plot twist: he was actually a robot controlled by the most villainous roach of all!

There is a lot of creative liberty taken here, considering the fact that the roaches all answer to a talking roach that is smart enough to control a man-like robot. However, super-powered girls aside, there is actually some factual behavior from the roach army. Between their disgusting demeanor and their relentless invasive tendencies, these roaches are just as despicable as the real ones. If only the Powerpuff Girls could also defeat the roaches in our world too…

Roaches Both Real And Fictional

These are our key observations and analyses from this episode:

• Important Creatures: The Professor’s defense of the invasive roach is a mini science lesson, all stemming from his statement that roaches are important and shouldn’t be squashed. As much as we despise roaches, it is true that they serve some purpose in the ecosystem. They are detritivores that break down dead plants and organic materials, and are part of the natural food chain by being food for birds.

• Survive Radiation: Another portion of the Professor’s lesson is that roaches are the only creatures that can survive radiation. It’s often said that roaches would be the last ones standing after a nuclear apocalypse, but even they aren’t fully immune to radiation. That being said, they can survive about 6 to 15 times the radiation that humans can. 

• Car & Elevator: Real roaches don’t seem to be smart enough to get to a desired destination by riding on a car and an elevator, which is good news for us. They can compress their bodies to fit in tight spaces and crawl into hidden places, as well as fly short distances if they have wings. Roaches can also run about four feet in one second, so they are speedy on their own account as well. 

• Dog Whistle: Roach Coach summons his roach army with a dog whistle-like contraption, which calls a disgusting amount of cockroaches to his room. Real roaches have cerci on the ends of their bodies, which look like antennae. These can detect disturbances by hearing changes in the air currents, so it is possible that they could “hear” a dog whistle. 

• Unorganized Humans: The main motivation for Roach Coach’s desire to take over the world is that he believes humans are so disorganized. Actual roaches aren’t too organized themselves, as opposed to eusocial insects that live in structured colonies, like ants and wasps. Cockroaches don’t have a hierarchy and instead make decisions on where to live as a group.

• Crawling Everywhere: During the peak of the roach army’s takeover, millions of nondescript roaches furiously crawl all over everything in the city, from the buildings to the people. Real roaches can’t take over that quickly, but it’s true that they can be found everywhere. They eat everything in sight and prefer to stay in dark places, like sewers and the garbage dump. Roaches often invade homes by crawling up through pipes and into the drains of a sink or bathtub.

• One Big Jar: Once Blossom flies through the city with a giant jar, she effortlessly gathers all of the roaches in one shot. This would be quite the efficient solution in real life, but actual roaches aren’t so easily gathered. It’s more effective to target them with strong treatments since traditional pesticides don’t affect tough roaches. Plus, roaches naturally scatter when they perceive a threat to their group, so they wouldn’t stay still long enough for us to scoop them up in a jar. 

• Behind Bars: As with all great cartoon superhero stories, the episode ends with Roach Coach being put in jail while staying in his own glass jar. We don’t put real roaches in prison — even though they cause us some serious problems — so we don’t know how effective this whole process would be. In the end, it’s more reliable to target roaches with strong treatments that will actually eliminate them. We just hope the Powerpuff Girls used an airtight jar to actually keep the roach contained!

Subjective Accuracy Rating Of The Episode: 2.5/5

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Citations

Bell, W.J., Roth, L.M., & Nalepa, C.A. (2007). Cockroaches: Ecology, behavior, and natural history. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 

McCracken, C., Rote, J.B., and Ryan, M. (Writers) & McCracken, C. And Tartakovsky, G. (Directors). (1998, November 25). Insect inside (season 1, episode 2a) [TV series episode]. In C. McCracken (Executive Producer), The powerpuff girls. Cartoon Network Studios, Hanna-Barbera Productions, and Morena Films. 

Nicholls, S. (2023, August 18). “Endlessly fascinating but rarely observed”: Inside the hidden world of cockroaches. Literary Hub. Available at https://lithub.com/endlessly-fascinating-but-rarely-observed-inside-the-hidden-world-of-cockroaches (Accessed on November 21, 2023).

Villazon, L. (n.d.). Is it true that cockroaches could survive a nuclear holocaust?. BBC Science Focus. Available at https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/is-it-true-that-cockroaches-could-survive-a-nuclear-holocaust (Accessed on November 21, 2023).

Wilson, T.V. (n.d.). How cockroaches work. How Stuff Works. Available at https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/cockroach2.htm (Accessed on November 21, 2023).