Cockroaches bring out our ultimate fears to life the moment we even hear their name. Ask ten people how they feel about these roaches, and one word comes out of their mouths: disgusting!Just the name calls for a sudden scurry across the floor, and a quick reach for the nearest shoe. Only a few creatures get such a unanimous bad reputation.But did you know that the insect world is far bigger and stranger than the few unwanted guests we meet at home?There are thousands of cockroach species, and most of them have never set foot in a house. They live in forests, hidden among fallen leaves and logs. Some are so unusual that they are far difficult to imagine to be real.One such is Madagascar’s giant cockroaches that hiss like snakes!Sounds unbelievable, right?Let’s dig in to learn more about the bizarre creature.
This cockroach hisses like a snake: Meet Madagascar’s bizarre giant insect
The Madagascar hissing cockroach is not your usual creepy crawler or anything but a run-of-the-mill roach. It is a big insect, and adults can grow as big as about 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5 cm) in length, which makes it one of the largest cockroach species in the world.
What does it look like?
According to Peoria Zoo, these roaches are shiny brown and oval-shaped, with no wings and one pair of antennae. The males are easy to spot because they have large horns on their heads. The females have a flatter head.This brings us to the most interesting question.
Why does it hiss?
Most noisy insects, like crickets, make sound by rubbing body parts together, but this roach has a different mechanism altogether. According to the Smithsonian, which quotes Animal Diversity Web and other zoo sources, it hisses through breathing holes on its abdomen, and this kind of sound-making through the breathing system is far more common in vertebrates, meaning animals with backbones.Their alarm hiss sounds like a loud snake hiss and is meant to scare off intruders and uses an aggressive hiss in combat and a long, slow hiss when courting a female.
Male roaches battle with horns
Males use those horns to fight and are often compared to the clashes of horned or antlered mammals, with rivals ramming each other. During the fight, winners tend to hiss more than losers, so the sound may help set up a pecking order, but these contests do not seem to cause much physical harm.
These cockroaches are not pests
Despite the family name, this roach is not a house invader. Like most cockroach species, it is not a pest and does not live in human homes. It hides on forest floors among leaf litter and logs, comes out at night, and mostly eats fruit and plant matter; most importantly, they also play an important part in the health of the rainforest.
They birth their young ones differently
Female Madagascar cockroaches make an egg case called an ootheca and carry it inside their bodies, so the young are born alive. National Geographic report says a female can have as many as 60 babies, called nymphs.
