These roaches form exclusive long-term relationships after eating each other's wings

## Summary
NPR Science LISTEN & FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio YouTube Music RSS link Science These roaches form exclusive long-term relationships after eating each other's wings March 18, 2026 9:21 AM ET Ari Daniel A new paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science describes evidence that the wood-feeding cockroach Salganea taiwanensis may engage in a behavior known as pair bonding. And yet, in a paper published in Royal Society Open Science , a trio of researchers presents evidence that suggests that Salganea taiwanensis , a kind of wood-feeding cockroach, may engage in what's known as pair bonding. Love at first bite The wood-feeding cockroach that Lo studied lives in the forests of Okinawa, Japan, among other places. "The male and the female will burrow into the rotting wood and form a little gallery," he says. It's like they've got this pact." It's a pact that the researchers say looks a lot like a pair bond, in which the two roaches, upon eating each other's wings, become highly aggressive towards outsiders and only tolerant of their partner.

## Article Content
NPR
Science
LISTEN & FOLLOW
NPR App
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Amazon Music
iHeart Radio
YouTube Music
RSS link
Science
These roaches form exclusive long-term relationships after eating each other's wings
March 18, 2026
9:21 AM ET
Ari Daniel
A new paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science describes evidence that the wood-feeding cockroach
Salganea taiwanensis
may engage in a behavior known as pair bonding.
Haruka Osaki
hide caption
toggle caption
Haruka Osaki
When you think of two individuals coupling up to raise and protect a family together, you might think of people or birds. But probably not cockroaches.
And yet, in a paper published in
Royal Society Open Science
, a trio of researchers presents evidence that suggests that
Salganea taiwanensis
, a kind of wood-feeding cockroach, may engage in what's known as pair bonding.
That "just means that two individual organisms will spend an extended period of time with each other and will exclude other individuals from the bond," says
Nate Lo
, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney and an author of the new study. "The two individuals know that the other member has their back."
Pair bonding comes with numerous benefits, including grooming, the joint defense of nest and offspring, and the sharing of food. It requires enough brain power to learn to recognize and remember one's partner. The behavior shows up frequently in
birds
,
mammals
, and even
fish
.
"But we very rarely see it in invertebrates, so things like insects or crustaceans or other creepy crawlies," says Lo.
Science
These cockroaches tweaked their mating rituals after adapting to pest control
Now, Lo and his colleagues believe they've found some of the first indications of pair bonding in an invertebrate. This means that these roaches, and perhaps other insects, may have more sophisticated cognition and social behavior than researchers once thought.
Love at first bite
The wood-feeding cockroach that Lo studied lives in the forests of Okinawa, Japan, among other places.
"The male and the female will burrow into the rotting wood and form a little gallery," he says.
And then they do something… unique. Over a period of hours, the two roaches chew off each other's wings — and eat them.
The "female eat[s] the male's wings and the male eats [the] female's wings," says
Haruka Osaki
, a behavioral ecologist at the Museum of Nature and Human Activities in Hyogo, Japan. And when this one-time meal is complete, "it means they formed a pair."
Short Wave
These ants quietly took over Manhattan — and they're not stopping there
This is when the couple starts making a nest out of their little patch of rotting paradise where they then mate and care for their young. "The wings, they're a protein source," explains Lo, "and this seems to set them up for some kind of romance into the future."
That is, the wing-eating appears to be a kind of consummation.
But pairing doesn't necessarily mean a pair
bond
. And the researchers wanted to know just how exclusive these insects are and how strong their bond actually is.
To figure this out, Osaki collected a bunch of roaches from Okinawa. "Just go to forest and find a log on the ground and chop it with my hatchet," she says. "So I destroy their house."
A pact resembling a pair bond
The experiment was simple. The team put pairs of roaches in artificial nest boxes. Some of those pairs had eaten each other's wings and some had not. The researchers then introduced a single intruder to the pairs.
Lo calls up a video to show what happened. A pair of roaches that both still have their wings appears on the screen. When the intruder enters the nest, there's no aggression or fuss. The interloper — whether male or female — is allowed to stay.
Treatments
Ants treat certain leg injuries with lifesaving amputations
"You see, they're just very relaxed about it," says Lo.
But when he calls up a roach pair that had eaten one another's wings, "both the male and the female attack," he observes, by ramming the intruder. "They also wiggle their butts and hit them with their butts. They're quite aggressive little creatures."
"You can see the intruder's very worried," adds Lo. "It's trying to escape because it knows that it's in trouble. So that suggests they don't want to have a third wheel. It's like they've got this pact."
It's a pact that the researchers say looks a lot like a pair bond, in which the two roaches, upon eating each other's wings, become highly aggressive towards outsiders and only tolerant of their partner. This ability to distinguish between individuals can provide benefits in terms of survival and reproduction.
Science
Can insects have culture? Puzzle-solving bumblebees show it's possible
There's another takeaway. "Invertebrates probably are more complex and have some form of cognition, more than we might expect," says Lo. "Even though they've got tiny brains, they can develop quite human-like characteristics." Or as Osaki puts it, humans may not be as special as we

---

## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- And the researchers wanted to know just how exclusive these insects are and how strong their bond actually is.
- Lo does point out that the two seemingly pair-bonded roaches spent an extra 24 hours together before the experiment (during which they ate each other's wings) compared to the roach pairs that hadn't bonded. "We're not sure about how important that is," he says, "so we're planning more experiments." Jessica Ware is the curator and chair of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History.
- She wasn't involved in the research, but agrees that it offers strong evidence for pair bonding in this type of cockroach.

### Areas for Consideration
N/A

### Implications
- NPR Science LISTEN & FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio YouTube Music RSS link Science These roaches form exclusive long-term relationships after eating each other's wings March 18, 2026 9:21 AM ET Ari Daniel A new paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science describes evidence that the wood-feeding cockroach Salganea taiwanensis may engage in a behavior known as pair bonding.
- Haruka Osaki hide caption toggle caption Haruka Osaki When you think of two individuals coupling up to raise and protect a family together, you might think of people or birds.
- And yet, in a paper published in Royal Society Open Science , a trio of researchers presents evidence that suggests that Salganea taiwanensis , a kind of wood-feeding cockroach, may engage in what's known as pair bonding.
- That "just means that two individual organisms will spend an extended period of time with each other and will exclude other individuals from the bond," says Nate Lo , an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney and an author of the new study. "The two individuals know that the other member has their back." Pair bonding comes with numerous benefits, including grooming, the joint defense of nest and offspring, and the sharing of food.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers pair, wings, roaches topics. Notable strengths include discussion of pair. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 1064.