Cockroach Drags Cigarette To Apparently Smoke It, Video Goes Viral

A cockroach became an internet sensation over the weekend after it was recorded indulging in its supposedly favorite vice.

The cockroach, being dubbed as ‘cigarette cockroach’ was caught on video as it tried to drag a cigarette butt almost double its size across a sewer gate, determined to get a puff out of it, as many people jokingly suggested.

The video was shot by Tom Kretchmar, an attorney, at the intersection of 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York. The video became viral after being posted on Twitter, garnering more than 95,000 likes and 21,000 retweets. The video was viewed almost 4 million times.

Kretchmar said he left the scene after watching the cockroach for 90 seconds and doesn’t know if it smoked the cigarette in the end.

“I watched for 90 seconds then I had to go so I don’t know how it ends! But surely you’re right. Also this was at the 53rd & 5th E/M stop if you want to send a reporter over to pick up where I left off,” he tweeted.

Usually, cockroaches invoke feelings of disgust. However, the actions of 'cigarette cockroach' immediately endeared to many people online. The 'cigarette cockroach' was received with feelings of fascination as well as empathy as it crawled its way into internet stardom.

"I guess if you have a lifespan of only 160 days, you might think, 'Why not?'" Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition tweeted.

Another user pointed out that cockroaches were used to smuggle cigarettes to a prisoner in solitary confinement and joked that the one in the video was being trained to do something similar. Netflix series Orange Is The New Black too explores a similar concept as cockroaches smuggling cigarettes.

Hilarious reactions and memes too followed as the video gained traction.

Cigarette cockroach brought back memories of the pizza rat, which became famous in 2015 for dragging a large slice of pizza through the stairs of a subway station.