A funny thing happened to me in front of a classroom filled with 23.5 fourth grade students this week. My topic was "Habitats and Harmony," and this was my third class on this day with the same subject. That morning I had packed my standard creatures: a Great Plains ratsnake, a scorpion, one tree frog, a millipede, one large tarantula, Amos the alligator, and two large Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

It was all routine, I would remove the creatures from their containers one at a time and do my show-and-tell. Amos the alligator is always last because I place him on a table so when they leave to return 

to their areas, and they get to touch "a purse with a pulse." (I don't tell them that!) Next to last were the cockroaches. I picked up the container. My two cockroaches had become two big ones and forty to fifty little ones! I never noticed that the female had put on a little weight.

I use African hissing cockroaches for classes because they are large enough, at four inches, to see from the back of the room. Unlike our American cockroach that produces an egg case containing the eggs, these giants give live birth to their young. Actually the eggs are formed and incubated within the abdomen. They hatch inside and emerge as nymphs. They are pearly white therefore most people think they are albino. The half-inch long babies dry to a dark chocolate brown like their parents. These cockroaches grow to four inches long and weigh ¼ to 7/8 ounces. They will eat anything organic and love living in anything that rots.
Now this is a scary thought. The males seem to enjoy fighting with each other. Hissing plays an important role during these scrimmages. The winners hiss more than the losers. Here’s the scary part, the hisses also contain information about the size of the opponent, and males can discriminate among the hisses of familiar males and strangers. Could this be misconstrued as a form of intelligence?

I can identify with these admirable creatures in a way. “Timid cockroach, why be so shy? We are brothers, thou and I. In the midnight, like yourself, I explore the pantry shelf!” Christopher Morley. On this day these smart cockroaches took part in the show-and-tell from inside their container. 

Contact Jim Dunlap, director of the Holifield Science Learning Center of Plano Independent School District, 3100 Shiloh Road, at 469-752-1194 or jdunlap@pisd.edu.

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