(careful, disturbing!)
I was experimenting with some stray cockroaches that ended up falling in my bath tub overnight (there is currently an infestation undergoing in my apartment building) and I found out that they are very easily killed by simply soaking them in soapy water.
I read that soap blocks some pores in insects' bodies which leads to suffocation, which appears to be the cause of death for my test cockroaches. But what I don't get is why about a half of them died with their innards bursting from their tail end. The water wasn't too hot to make them boil. Is it that they suffocate so hard that attempting to breathe they blow out their insides? Or is it the soap's reaction with the cockroach's bodily materials? Or is something else causing this?
I remember watching a documentary on injecting various insects with hydrogen peroxide which caused much more dramatic explosions, but it's not like I was injecting cockroaches, I just sprinkled them with soap water.
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