Do roaches feel emotions?

MissSkittles

MissSkittles

Chameleon Enthusiast
At the risk of sounding like a total fruit loop, I have to ask if anyone has ever observed social behavior and/or signs of emotions in their roaches.
Last week I had gotten an order of discoid roaches, which the seller just packed loose and I contained in the shipping box. Not a nice surprise to open the box and have roaches crawling out at me. ? Anyhow, a couple of babies managed to escape...maybe were hiding in the box flaps. I found them both huddled together about 8 feet away from where I opened the box. They obviously stayed together during their little journey and the way they were huddled together was a bit striking. Then the other day as I was feeding a couple to my beardie, these two were also huddling together. I believe all living things experience fear as it’s a survival thing. But are these creepy crawlies capable of the need to console/be consoled when afraid? Or is staying together a survival instinct?
 
MissSkittles said:
At the risk of sounding like a total fruit loop, I have to ask if anyone has ever observed social behavior and/or signs of emotions in their roaches.
Last week I had gotten an order of discoid roaches, which the seller just packed loose and I contained in the shipping box. Not a nice surprise to open the box and have roaches crawling out at me. ? Anyhow, a couple of babies managed to escape...maybe were hiding in the box flaps. I found them both huddled together about 8 feet away from where I opened the box. They obviously stayed together during their little journey and the way they were huddled together was a bit striking. Then the other day as I was feeding a couple to my beardie, these two were also huddling together. I believe all living things experience fear as it’s a survival thing. But are these creepy crawlies capable of the need to console/be consoled when afraid? Or is staying together a survival instinct?
Click to expand...
I’m sure they feel some sort of emotion when they see a chameleon walking toward them lol.
 
I can't wait to see the turns this thread creates.

Personally I am with you. I think all living creatures have the ability to experience basics like fear... Comes down to self preservation. I moved a pot off my lawn the other day... And there was a 7 inch worm sitting there. When I went to use the small shovel to scoop it up and take it over to my garden its very first reaction was to try to pull back. It took me a few minutes to get it because it kept pulling away and throwing itself off the shovel.
 
So the word emotions is what throws us. I believe all animals have their type of emotion. They don’t necessarily have human emotion.
Oddly I think about this a lot. For pray animals emotion attachment would be terrible. They have to be able to react to danger them move on. It would be fatal if they had to stop and be upset. Further could you imagine the emotional toll of seeing friends get eaten on the daily.

Like I said I believe they all have feelings, we just can’t attach human emotion.

For my male I have to crush the roaches head so it won’t struggle so much, he has no tongue. I don’t like it, but it is necessary for him to eat.
 
Humans come from animals. They feel the same as we do without the excessive rationalizations. Death is good. Without death the universe would not work.
Without the universe we would not be alive. Even stars die. But, I still feel bad, when I see crickets cry, whenever I come near.

I hope I don't get bad karma for all the insects deaths I have caused.

This video explains it better:
 
@Deejay that was one of the best thought provoking videos I've seen in a long time!!!!!
Thanks for posting it! You don't happen to know the man's name do you?
 
I agree with some other commenters here, I guess it depends what you mean by emotion. Many things will live based off instinct and response/reaction. So like a worm in beman's case might just react a certain way based off how it evolved, the one's that did that lived more often, the one's that didn't died(over millions of years). Another thing to consider, there are literally parts of our brains that when one TINY thing is disrupted, it can change our entire personality. There's even parasites that act on this in certain animals, getting them to fearlessly walk into a predators direction. Makes one wonder about the whole concept of free will eh. Anyway, When you take into account most living things do not have brains like ours, I think shows that a lot of organisms wouldn't have emotions we could relate to.

All that said, roaches are very intelligent insects. They huddle together for warmth/humidity and because they are social! So I do think they could have some simple level of 'emotion'. I'm no scientist and I can't say for certain, just my guess. They will get to know you're not a threat when you come in for feeding IME. They seem to learn based off experiences. Not going to lie I feel kind of bad when I have to feed off an insect, especially roaches, but I rationalize it with the fact I increase their captive population and give them good lives lol.
 
Great, I had to watch it again just to rethink my understanding. I don't know his name. The question at the end felt like it was going to be do humans love animals, but it was do animals love humans. It feels like one question can't be asked with out the other question being asked. It's very deep. ???
 
kinyonga said:
I had a hissing cockroach for quite a while years ago. After being handled a few times, it no longer hissed at me. If I wanted to show someone how it hissed I had to hand it to someone unfamiliar...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/tec...ches-recognize-familiar-touch/article4134500/
Click to expand...

"this is my frilly". "So can you make it frill?" Holds head low in embarrassment...


As for roaches, i know they feel safe if they are touching each other... And babies like to stay together and with mom, for a few days at least.
 
While I’m sure their little roachy brains aren’t wired for the same emotion as humans, I wonder if they do have their own unique set of emotional response. I really hate roaches (most bugs too) but thanks to an overactive sense of compassion, I feel bad when I have to feed my critters. I’ve justified the mass slaughter of bugs in my environment as I have viewed them as lacking all emotional feelings. I guess now that I have an intentional colony of roaches I’m for the first time observing that they may have social orders and may possess more than just survival instincts. I have noticed that while they still run and hide when I open their bin to feed them, they have stopped secreting the stinky fear stuff. While still and always they will be yucky bugs, perhaps they are more interesting than I have thought.
 
"While I’m sure their little roachy brains aren’t wired for the same emotion as humans, " but that just it, our brains developed from their brains. Therefore, the roaches wires are in our brains! We feel the way they do, since they came first. An interesting thought. ?
 
Deejay said:
"While I’m sure their little roachy brains aren’t wired for the same emotion as humans, " but that just it, our brains developed from their brains. Therefore, the roaches wires are in our brains! We feel the way they do, since they came first. An interesting thought. ?
Click to expand...
Very interesting idea. It is said that when humanity has nuked itself out of existence, only the roaches will survive. Perhaps they will evolve into the next sentient life on the planet.
 
Deejay said:
"While I’m sure their little roachy brains aren’t wired for the same emotion as humans, " but that just it, our brains developed from their brains. Therefore, the roaches wires are in our brains! We feel the way they do, since they came first. An interesting thought. ?
Click to expand...

Fun thought, but nah IDT it works that way. People aren't just roaches added on to lol.
 
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