If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.
Cockroaches transmit diseases and their feces can trigger allergic reactions.
Butterflies pollinate flowers and help our food supply. There’s more to it than aesthetics.
cats and dogs also trigger allergies but no one is championing killing pets because of it
you, a human, transmit diseases a lot easier than a smooth, sleek creature with nowhere for germs to stick that’s constantly cleaning itself and only as dirty as its environment. if you dont leave raw meat out for cockroaches to crawl on you’re not going to get salmonella???
they eat decaying matter and fertilize soil so that plants can grow
and my favorite things about cockroaches: they’re not necessarily social but given the opportunity they will group together and make decisions as a whole. cockroaches have their own individual personalities but the group comes first, like a family. and their behavior is very different if raised in isolation than with a group. they appear to get anxious when others are watching them try to complete a difficult task. cockroaches tell us so much about the development of social behaviors, and since they are easy to keep and reproduce quickly, cross-generational studies are also relatively simple
so if you kill a cockroach, you’re likely killing a recognizable member of a family, considering their social behavior, whereas adult butterflies pretty much mate and thats it, most of the time
butterflies are cool too obviously, but no, there’s not more to it than aesthetics and ignorance based on aesthetic preference