How Many Teeth Are Present In Gizzard Of Cockroach?

The gizzard is a small, round thick muscular lining structure. Cockroach gizzard has six teeth and bacteria which helps them digest food. Before digesting the food the food stays in the cockroach gizzard for a while.

So, how many teeth are present in gizzard of cockroach? There are six teeth in the gizzard of cockroach. These teeth are very sharp and help in digesting food. These teeth help in grinding the food and turns the food into small pieces. Without these teeth, digestion could have become challenging for a cockroach.

What Is A Gizzard And Why It Is Important?

The gizzard is an organ that helps animals, insects to digest food. A gizzard is a vital organ for those animals and insects.

After consuming the food, the food passes through their food pipe, and it reaches gizzard where it stays for a while before the digestion begins.

Various process of food breakdown starts in the gizzard. Cockroach swallows the food in large pieces, but these large pieces need to break down in small pieces, that is what happens in the gizzard.

The primary purpose of the gizzard is to break down food and make it digestible, but it works differently for different animals, birds, and insects.

How Does It Help A Cockroach?

A cockroach doesn’t chew its food, so the job falls to the gizzard. Cockroach gizzard has sharp teeth and bacteria, which helps them to digest the food. Before the digestion process starts, their gizzards help them to break the food down, which makes digestion much easier.

Without proper break down of the food, their metabolism can become jeopardized, and if their gizzard is damaged, somehow it can become life-threatening for the cockroach.

What If Gizzards Was Large Could There Be More Teeth?

The number of teeth solely depends upon the need. Large gizzard doesn’t mean does more teeth, although it can mean large teeth. A gizzard is also not just about teeth; it more about breaking down of food, so cockroach doesn’t need more than that amount of teeth. Not all animals, birds, or insects have teeth in their gizzard.

Some of them have a different process for breaking down food. Chicken uses dirt, stone, and enzymes to break down food, and before the digestion process starts, the food remains in gizzard for 12 hours and breaks down over there for easy digestion.

Are There Any Cockroaches That Don’t Have Gizzard?

There are several species of cockroaches, but their biological functionality is the same. There may be some cockroaches that don’t have a gizzard, but these are anatomical defects, and the cockroach will not survive for too long. The cockroach will not be able to digest food and will eventually die.

Cockroach are scavengers, and they eat different kinds of food all these food needs a unique system to digest, and these gizzard provides the extra help to breakdown various types of food and make it digestible.

Can Gizzard Be Destroyed Because Of Excess Bacteria?

The bacteria within the cockroach’s gizzard helps in digesting the food. Those bacteria are essential. They don’t harm the gizzard, much like how we can tolerate hydrochloric acid which is one of the most potent acids without burning our stomach. Cockroach doesn’t die due to excess digestive bacteria. The bacteria start to function the moment they get food; it’s a symbiotic relationship.

We also have bacteria within us, and they serve many purposes within us. There are good and bad bacteria within the human body. Excess numbers can cause a problem, but fortunately cockroach has defense mechanism and resistance properties to keep bacteria amount in check. These bacteria only serve them in digesting food.

The degree of tolerance and resistance varies from insect to insect. An insect that has more bacteria within their gut has low resistance.

Low resistance means the body doesn’t resist when bacteria grow within them; however, if the bacteria increases too much and starts affecting the insect, then the defense mechanism kicks in and starts killing excess bacteria.

The cockroach ingests the bacteria by consuming some part from the other cockroach who has the bacteria. So, in a cockroach colony most of the cockroach will have the same bacteria.

How Do Cockroaches Digest Their Food?

Cockroach bites the food, then breaks it with their mandibles or jaws, and then the food passes through their esophagus. After that, the job of gizzard comes in. Here the food is stored for some time. Bacteria break down the food, then digestive juices start secreting, and the food is digested.

How Long Can A Cockroach Survive Without Food And Water?

Some species of cockroach can survive for about one month without food but can only live for about a week without water. They can survive for this long because they are cold-blooded, and they can preserve energy by keeping their temperature low.

Still, without water, even cockroaches can’t live that long because most of their body fluid needs water to function, and without water, digestion will stop, and all other functions will stop leading to death.

Seven days is still a long time span compared to us. We can only live for almost three days without water, and that too depends upon the individual to individual because we are warm-blooded, and we need water for regulating our temperature and for our body fluids.

Heat is generated from the food we eat, and that’s what maintains our temperature. Without food, we will not survive, as there will be no energy to do any functions.

How Did Cockroach Come Into The Contact Of Digestive Bacteria?

Bacteria are there within all living beings. However, some organism uses these bacteria for different purposes and creates a symbiotic relationship. The bacteria and the cockroach is dependent upon each other for survival. This is a fascinating process. It almost like the cockroach is commanding the bacteria to help them digest the food.

This is an evolutionary benefit that cockroach has. Cockroach’s ancestors found out that keeping helpful bacteria within them helps them to digest food much easily and also consumes less energy.

Less energy consumption means more longevity and more evolution. Being an omnivorous means consuming different kinds of food and digesting different types of food consumes a lot of energy, so this bacteria helps them to breakdown the food and make it easily digestible.

It is not known when this symbiotic relationship started, but this happened for their betterment. This relationship helps both cockroaches and bacteria for many purposes.

Even in the animal kingdom, you can see this kind of relationship. Wild boar depend upon meerkat for cleaning their body. Meerkat goes up to a wild boar to consume the insects within their body and helps them get clean, and in return, meerkat gets to have free food.

Wild boar don’t harm them, although they can kill them if they fall on the meerkat, but they are careful.

The same goes for the cockroach and the relationship with the bacteria. Bacteria doesn’t harm the cockroach from the inside because it gets food without doing anything, and they survive and grow inside a cockroach.

The cockroach body accepts that because they are helpful. If these bacteria become harmful to a cockroach, then the antibody of the cockroach will kick in and will kill these bacteria.