You take a gulp from a tall glass of milk. But this creamy drink didn’t come from a cow—it came from roaches! Hawaii’s Pacific beetle cockroach feeds its young milk so nutritious, scientists say it could be a superfood for people.
Pacific beetle cockroaches are the only known viviparous (vye-VIH-puh-ruhs) species of cockroach. That means they give birth to live offspring instead of laying eggs. After giving birth, the mom secretes a creamy yellow milk-like substance to feed her young. The proteins in the milk form crystals inside the babies’ guts. These crystals dissolve as they’re digested, nourishing the growing offspring.
Ramaswamy Subramanian, a professor at Purdue University in Indiana, found that roach milk also contains nutrients like sugars and fats—just like milk produced by mammals. Roach milk provides much more energy though—three times that of buffalo milk, previously thought to be the world’s most nutritious.
However, says Subramanian, we’re a long way from roach milk smoothies. Collecting just 6 tablespoons of the substance takes a month and 1,000 cockroaches. So instead, Subramanian has taken the gene that contains the hereditary information for making the milk and inserted it into yeast. The gene directs these single-celled organisms to make roach milk. It took colonies of yeast two days to make the same amount of milk as 1,000 roaches. Eventually, this process could be used to produce much larger amounts.
Subramanian says roach milk tastes sweet. Would you try it?