Small Animal Kingdom - Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches

March 2010

I'm no cockroach specialist but should they really be kept like this?

It's certainly not ideal but having kept other species I can tell you from experience how surprisingly easy it is to end up in this situation with 'live-bearing' cockroaches - they breed like crazy and you can very quickly go from half-a-dozen adults to half-a-dozen adults and some cute tiny babies to hordes of the things!

this is simply too many! as i do keep some - when they moult their skin goes soft...therefore meaning alot of these might be misshaped!

They all look pretty good to me (but then space when moulting is less of an issue in species that aren't fully winged).

There is quite a bit of space above where this photo was taken that is not so dense with cockroaches. They can all "stretch out" when they want to, but they seem to conglomerate on the bottom with one another.