About the Roach Lab

Animal research has long been an essential part of psychology, particularly in the areas of learning and animal behavior. In order to understand the human mind, it is useful to study the similarities and differences with other animal minds.

Yet many psychology departments no longer support the traditional rat or pigeon lab used for teaching learning and animal behavior. This is largely due to the expense of maintaining a colony of vertebrate animals as well as ethical concerns over the treatment and disposal of animals. However, research consistently shows that these types of active learning experiences provide students with better learning outcomes.

To remedy this situation, we are using a novel and inexpensive invertebrate animal to illustrate many of the same classic principles of learning and behavior: the discoid cockroach (Blaberus discoidalis). Using cockroaches has the additional advantage of avoiding ethical concerns, as most people would not hesitate to step on one.

Despite the simplicity of this animal model, cockroaches can be both classically and operantly conditioned. Additionally, housing and caring for the roaches is easy and inexpensive. While many people have an initial aversion to working with cockroaches, our experience is that once people learn more about them, this aversion decreases. We believe that roach labs are a viable way to bring back animal labs to universities and thus provide students with higher quality learning experiences.