Premium Services    Cockroach (generic) Reproduction of illustration by Leonard Baskin From: Esther Baskin, Creatures of Darkness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962) NYPL, General Research Division

In this generic portrait, the artist, printmaker, and book illustrator Leonard Baskin captures the essence of the cockroach, that urban insect pest whose ancestors were on earth before the dinosaurs. New York City is home to four species, but the one most often seen scuttling away when a light is suddenly turned on is the small brown German Cockroach, Blattella germanica. The American Cockroach, Perpiplaneta americana, the "water bug," is larger, and there are also the Brown-banded and Oriental cockroaches, Supella longipalpa and Blatta orientalis, respectively.

Attempts to exterminate roaches are usually only partially and temporarily successful. Like many other insect pests, roaches can develop resistance to a particular pesticide, and pass this immunity on to new generations.