Cockroaches are scurrying creatures producing hissing, fluttering, and stridulating noises at night. But common household roaches have now lost their ability to generate noises.
Due to this, these bugs are famous for being discrete and silent, which makes it challenging to identify their infestation in homes. But sometimes, roaches may produce particular noises that are easily recognizable.
If you’re resting at night and hear hissing noises coming from cabinets or walls, the chances are that your home has an infestation problem. But the question is: Why are roaches noisier at night, and how do you listen to these noises?
Let’s find answers to all the confusion in our minds and learn more about the phenomena of cockroach noises at night.
Do Roaches Make Noise?
Some roaches, such as the Madagascar hissing roach, can produce audible sounds. The noise is made because of their scurrying legs and fluttering wings. However, it is rarely loud.
Then, why do you hear hissing noises at night? That’s the mating noise. When cockroaches mate, the male roach makes stridulation noises to attract the female bug. So, during the night, when there is little to no activity, you’d be able to hear these noises.
Besides this, if your home has a dense infestation problem, you might hear hundreds of roaches fluttering their wings or scurrying their legs. Usually, these noises come from the cabinets or walls as roaches hide in tiny spaces and corners inaccessible by humans.
Do Common Household Roaches Vocalize?
The most common household roaches do not vocalize. There are over 4500 species of bugs, and about four of them are found in our homes. These include:
- American cockroach
- German cockroach
- Oriental cockroach
- Brown-banded cockroach
These four common types of roaches don’t typically produce noises. However, some other wild species vocalize and make hissing noises.
The sound produced by a single roach is not audible to humans. However, if your home has a cockroach colony, the bugs may vocalize in a group, indicating the presence of a heavy infestation.
Do Wild Roaches Make Noise at Night?
While vocalizing roaches is a minority, some wild cockroaches can produce loud noises. These noises sound like hissing and loud chirps.
You’d only hear cockroaches make noise at night during mating and courtship. This is termed stridulation, during which the male roach rubs its pronotum against the coastal veins to produce audible sounds.
Wild roaches also produce hissing noises when they sense a threat. When the bug interacts with another bug, it feels threatened. Therefore a roach’s encounter with another insect may lead to chilling noises at night.
How Do Roaches Communicate?
Wild cockroaches produce noises through spiracles to communicate with each other. In addition, roaches sometimes attract mates and warn off other predators in their surroundings.
In contrast to wild roaches, common household cockroaches use pheromones for communication. Pheromones are chemicals that act like hormones. Roaches excrete them through their feces.
When another roach comes across the pheromones, it triggers a social response between the species. So if you hear the roach noises at night, it could be due to the communication between numerous cockroaches.
Otherwise, common roaches are silent creatures. So when you hear chirping sounds at night, it could be due to different bugs.
What Noises Do Cockroaches Make?
For most cockroach species, the most common sounds are chirping and hissing. However, homeowners with a heavy roach infestation may hear some of these noises at night when there is little to no activity.
When more roaches encounter or feel threatened, they produce audible noises. But it’s evident that roaches only communicate when there is a large group. So here are the types of sounds cockroaches make:
Stridulation
The chirping sound of roaches during mating is called stridulation, accomplished by a cockroach rubbing its body parts together.
Usually, male roaches produce stridulation sounds as it is their call for mating. Other bugs, such as crickets, do not produce stridulation sounds as they rub their wings to make fluttering noises.
Roaches only mimic this phenomenon by using their spiracles. Spiracles are small openings present on a cockroach’s exoskeleton. They take in oxygen via these openings.
These tiny openings are close to keeping away pesticides, chemicals, and water. They also save the roach from drowning. Additionally, the opening and closing of these spiracles can produce a rhythmic sound.
Hissing
Roaches produce hissing noises through their spiracles during breathing. They pass air through these tiny openings to generate a soft sound. Their hissing can startle other insects and animals.
The hissing trait distinguishes the wild hissing cockroach from common house species. Some wild species that produce the hissing sound are:
- Giant black hisser
- Dwarf Madagascar roach
- Great flat hisser
- Stripes hisser
- Broad horned hisser roach
- The tiger hissing roach
But these cockroaches are common in the Madagascar forests and only survive in the wild. So if you hear hissing noises in your home at night, the chances are that your home has other types of bugs.
Fluttering
All species of adult roaches have wings, but only a tiny proportion of them can fly. While other bugs glide their wings, the flying cockroaches make fluttering sounds via their wings.
But some cockroaches which do not fly collectively flutter their wings. This fluttering noise is audible in your home if there is a large colony of cockroaches collectively gliding their wings.
Therefore when you hear cockroach noises at night, the chances are that there is an infestation in your home.
Do Cockroaches Make a Clicking Noise?
Cockroaches cannot make clicking sounds. Therefore, if you hear clicking sounds in your home, there are other bugs, such as beetles or crickets, since all species of roaches cannot produce clicking noises.
Many people mistake a beetle for a roach when they hear clicking noises. So if you’re hearing the clicking noise, there are high chances that your home has beetles.
However, cockroaches rub their hard shells against intercostal veins, which produce a sound similar to clicking. Often this is called chirping instead of clicking. But you must ensure that you hear the roach chitter and that your home is free of crickets.
An Interesting Fact: Only Speckled Roaches Make Stridulation Sounds
Despite a common courtship method, not all cockroaches make stridulation sounds. However, the Journal of Insect Physiology claims that stridulation is a common trait among speckled roaches.
They are also called Nauphoeta cinerea. Their stridulation produces short pulses with double chirps lasting up to three minutes.
Why Do Roaches Only Produce Sound at Night?
Cockroaches are nocturnal, so you may hear incidental sounds at night. These little critters are more active at night as predators do not threaten them.
But roaches also vocalize during the day, but you’d be unable to hear the sound as it’s not as quiet as night. This does not mean that cockroaches cannot operate during the day. Sometimes, their last resort is daytime roaming.
Since their internal survival instincts kick in, they prefer to roam at night. So if you hear the roach sounds at night, it means your home has an infestation.
Pro Tip: Cover Your Ears When You Sleep
Did you know that your cockroaches love your ears? These little critters come out at night and crawl over anything lying around motionless.
Since we lie motionless when sleeping, this can make you a victim of cockroaches, as they love small, humid, warm places. So if you hear cockroach noises at home, always cover your ears when sleeping.
It’s not just a myth! An incident happened to a Florida-based woman when a cockroach crawled inside her ear while asleep. Even more shocking is that the roach survived in her ear for nine days before it was removed!
Therefore, you should resort to roach infestation control methods if you hear the roaches at night.
FAQs
Do Flying Cockroaches Make Noise?
Flying cockroaches make soft noises that are undetectable by humans. However, if your home has a heavy cockroach infestation, the collective fluttering of wings will make audible sounds in your home.
Can You Hear Roaches Crawling?
You may not hear roaches crawling during the daytime, but you may listen to cockroaches crawling inside the walls at night when it’s quiet. The crawling may sound like a chirping sound, which is most of the time audible. However, this only happens when your home has a large roach infestation; one or two roaches can make loud crawling noises.
Do Cockroaches Make High-Pitched Noise?
Some roaches can make high-pitched chirping noises, which is a common trait among insects. You will likely hear this high-pitched noise if your home mostly stays quiet and has a large infestation.
Can a Roach Scream?
No, roaches can’t scream, but they can surely make humans scream.
What To Do When You Hear Roaches in Your Home?
If you hear cockroaches in your home, it’s best to make a loud noise when you enter your room to scare away the roaches before you go to bed. If the cockroach noises annoy you, it’s best to stomp or clap to scare them away into tiny corners.
Do Cockroaches Make Noise in Walls?
Cockroaches do not make noise by themselves when they reside on your walls. But they may brush against the insulation paper or other materials that produce audible sounds.
If the roaches in the walls make a sound, the sound will have to pass through the drywall and the insulation before you hear it.
Even bigger pests and animals such as rats have to make scurrying noises in the walls for you to hear them. Therefore it’s pretty tricky to hear noise from the wall if roaches make it. Thus, checking your home for any other bug or pest infestation is best.
Why Do Cockroaches Make Hissing Noises at Night?
Cockroaches make hissing noises at night because there is less human and animal activity to startle them. These little critters are more active at night as predators do not threaten them. However, roaches also make noises during the day, but you can’t hear them as it’s not silent at that time.
Conclusion
Cockroaches are unhygienic creatures that become more active at night. They produce loud hissing noises, which are audible if they have formed an infestation in your home. But only a few species of roaches vocalize.
Therefore, if you hear cockroaches vocalizing, it could indicate:
- Wild hissing roaches are present
- Common household roaches have formed a heavy infestation
- The cockroaches are mating (stridulation noises)
- Your home has a cockroach predator such as dogs or cats
- There are flying cockroaches in your home
If you hear fluttering, hissing, or chirping sounds, you must ensure that it’s a cockroach colony. Sometimes, other bugs such as beetles and crickets produce chirping noises at night, which people mistake for roach noises.
To identify whether your house has a roach infestation, you must call a pest exterminator and hand over the matter to professionals.