NO. I0 COCKROACHES—ROTH AND WILLIS 9 
by coming in contact with or by eating feces that the insect can acquire 
intestinal parasites, 
Mallis (1954) reported that a dairy in San Antonio, Tex., found 
its bottled milk contaminated with coliform bacilli. The contamina- 
tion was traced to the bottle caps, and it was only after the bottle 
caps were stored where cockroaches could not enter that the con- 
tamination disappeared. 
Cockroaches become contaminated with feces in sewers, latrines, 
privies, animal cages, chicken houses, etc. Monkeys, other zoo or 
laboratory animals, birds, and possibly man, may become infected by 
eating captured cockroaches. More probably, however, man would be 
infected by disease organisms carried onto his food or his person by 
cockroaches that have fed on or crawled over feces or some other 
source of infection. 
Jettmar (1935) concluded from observations in Manchuria and 
Transbaikalia (Buriat Mongol Republic) that cockroaches were well 
suited to carry infectious material He saw great numbers of 
Blattella germanica feeding on secretions flowing from the nostrils 
and mouths of corpses of persons that had died of lung diseases. 
These secretions were recognized as containing masses of infectious 
bacteria in almost pure culture. 
Morrell (1911) cited sputum, pus, and decaying refuse as supple- 
mentary foods of cockroaches. In his experiments, he fed German 
cockroaches tuberculous sputum which they “devoured voraciously.” 
Antonelli (1930), while investigating two outbreaks of typhoid 
fever in Italy, found that Blatta orientalis frequented sewers and open 
latrines and migrated into the houses. Dow (1955) trapped Blattella 
germanica (or possibly B. vaga [R. P. Dow, p. c.?]), Periplaneta 
americana, and Periplaneta brunnea in outdoor privies in Texas in 
1948. Paired traps were placed in both house and privy in the same 
yard. Greater numbers of P. americana were found in the privies 
than in the houses, but the opposite was true for the other species. 
P. americana was found in great numbers in latrines in Iran (Bei- 
Bienko, 1950). Cockroaches greatly favor latrine pits in Venezuela, 
also (Tejera, 1926). In Malaya the favorite breeding places for 
cockroaches are improperly sealed septic tanks and covered drains 
(Anonymous, 1939). Large populations of cockroaches are also found 
in septic tanks and cesspools in Java (Jan H. Vanderbie, p. c.). Bonnet 
(1948) stated that in Hawaii, Periplaneta americana and P. australa- 
siae are frequently found in restaurants and homes, but can always 
2p. c. = personal communication. 
