Episode 1 - Roach vs. Humans vs. Giant Praying Mantis

Roach vs. Humans vs. Giant Praying Mantis
Episode	1
Air date	October 23, 2021
Writer	Rev Storm
Director	Rev Storm
Episode guide
Next	Episode 2 - A Day in the Life of a Giant Tarantula and Scorpion

This is the first episode in the storyline of "Humans-B-Gone!" You can watch it here.

Episode Summary

The episode opens with Professor Gregorsa explaining how insects have been on land and in the air for 25 million years before any animal with bones. The focus then shifts to a female cockroach who is shown moving around, finding water and a place to rest. The narration explains that the cockroach's form has served it well for 320 million years for things like food, water, and a place to sleep. However, the narration also hints at the danger the cockroach faces in the world and eventually gets crushed. The current scene ends with soldiers brandishing weapons and the ominous appearance of Sophodra. The episode then shifts over to Professor Gregorsa addressing the viewer directly in a white void, introducing himself as a cockroach. He explains how he is different from the one explained earlier. He then started to explain the concept of "macrovolutes," a group of insects that are colossal in size. Some of the bugs that are included in this are roaches, beetles, flies, grasshoppers, and others. The episode also touches on the square-cube law, which is something that the macrovolutes have conquered.

-Gregorsa's Notes-

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Found at 0:13

[1]

Tiktaalik roseae

The amphibious Tiktaalik lived in 375 million years ago. It possessed limbs intermediate between fins and legs, and all land-dwelling vertebrates (including yourself) are descended from it. The first insects are estimated to have appeared 480 million years ago, going on to evolve flight in 400 mya.

1 pt if you knew "vertebrate" refers to the group of animals possessing backbones.

2 pts if you knew insects predated land vertebrates.

Found at 0:20

[2]

Periplaneta americana

From the Greek roots peri- and planēt-, our scientific name translates to something like "American wandering all around."' (Note: We do not actually originate from the Americas.)

Like other roaches, our protocules play an important part in the ecosystem, capable of breaking down a variety of organic detritus and cycling it back into the environment.

The American cockroach is one of only a few cockroach species that are hardy enough to survive in human homes--providing a rare cornerstone of the food web in an environment otherwise inhospitable to most forms of life.

5 pts if you're familiar with my order as anything other than pests.

Found at 0:23

[3]

A 40 to 50-million-year-old cockroach in amber

The first roach-like insects, or roachoids, appeared around 300 mya in the late Carboniferous.

I'll admit I'm oversimplying a little--the modern roach is different from these ancestors in several ways, such as lacking an ovipositor (specialized egg-laying part). However, the basic form has endured.

1 pt if you knew roaches have ancient forms.

Found at 2:10

[4]

The square-cube law describes how as an object increases in size, its volume increases in three dimensions, but its surface increases in only two. Think of a piece of a candy wrapped in plastic. You can easily pick the candy up by the wrapper because it's so small.

If the piece of candy were the size of a large dog, however, its weight would tear through the wrapper even if the plastic were the same relative thickness. If we were simply larger insects scaled up, our insides would suffer the same fate as that piece of candy.

Fortunately, there are a few factors keeping our insides inside us (and defying other limits physics would impose), and rest assured that I will be addressing all of them.

1 pt if your instinct was to immediately declare me an impossibility.

"Secret" Quote

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Reveal

"I'll have to account for

but she's back already. Next time"

Sources for the Episode

Each episode has sources that are listed at the end of the episode, click "Sources" to show all the sources at the end of the episode.

Sources

• Merckx, V., Bidartondo, M. I., & Hynson, N. A. (2009). Myco-heterotrophy: when fungi host plants. Annals of botany, 104(7), 1255–1261. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcp235 • Daeschler, E., Shubin, N. & Jenkins, F. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04639

• California Academy of Sciences. (2014, November 6). Landmark study on the evolution of insects. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 2, 2021 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141106143709.htm

• Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America's most-trusted online dictionary. Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.

• Bell, William J.; Adiyodi, K.G. (1981). American Cockroach. Springer. pp. 1, 4. ISBN 978-0-412-16140-7.

• Srini Kambhampati, Cockroaches: Ecology, Behavior, and Natural History. William J. Bell, Louis M. Roth, and Christine A. Nalepa., Integrative and Comparative Biology, Volume 48, Issue 4, October 2008, Pages 541–543

• Legendre, F., Nel, A., Svenson, G. J., Robillard, T., Pellens, R., & Grandcolas, P. (2015). Phylogeny of Dictyoptera: Dating the Origin of Cockroaches, Praying Mantises and Termites with Molecular Data and Controlled Fossil Evidence. PloS one, 10(7), e0130127. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130127

• LaBarbera, M.C. (n.d.). The Biology of B-Movie Monsters. https://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/.