Can roaches walk up walls and on ceilings?
The answer is YES. Roaches come with special equipment (pretarsal arolia, and tarsal pulvilli) to help them grab hold of surfaces and walk up walls and on ceilings! BUT they have a hard time doing this on SMOOTH surfaces.
Similar to other insects, cockroaches are pretty good climbers. They are able to climb due to the small claws/barbs on their feet. This allows them to essentially grab on to rougher surfaces. This can be a problem around a house because this means they can climb many things:
wood, concrete, drywall, brick, stone
They can’t climb all surfaces
Since they essentially need to grab a surface they are not able to climb really smooth surfaces such as:
glass, porcelain, marble, metal
Some cockroaches can climb better than others
Oriental cockroaches are less adept at climbing than the American or German variety. Their claws are completely different and therefore they are not able to climb as many types of surfaces.
