I think its awesome that you came up with this idea! I met my pet hissers at a brain expo at Marshall University. I fell in love with pet roaches and entomology in general. I believe there is much to be gained by their study. What other ideas do you have about your pet roaches?
---------- Idea 1: record and play "hissings"
Another idea I have is to record the several "hiss" and then try to put an isolated roach next to a sound device playing those sounds and see what happens.
A simple mobile phone can record and play it.
I will see if I will do this this month.
--------------- Idea 2: hisser maternity
Pick a few roachs (that will be like 1 month old) and put them in a micro-vivarium with everything they need.
Practically they will be always on the food because the container will very small.
Will this decrease the deaths (they won´t be attacked by adults) ?
Or will this show that they need to be with adults to live ?
This will show if the "food zone" should be in a "neutral territory"....my actual "food zone" is deep inside the adult´s hidding zone...should I put it outside so the baby won´t be attacked when it wants to eat ?...he passes all the time away from them...
------------- Idea 3: tracking a hisser
It would be cool to glue a tracking device (with fast epoxy...never with superglue since it´s toxic for the eyes) to an adult roach (in nymphs it could perturbe the molt).
All mouvments would be recorded and feeded to a computer so I could have a 3D map of it´s mouvements.
You would know when they feed, near who they prefer to stay with...etc...they day/night rythms.
There must be a cheap way to track...but I am no engineer.
----------- This is a PDF about "tracking insects"
http://www.biodivers...NAL_AMENDED.pdf
----------- A site about tracking "dragon flies"
http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/4759615.stm
"Each transmitter weighed about a third of a gram and had enough battery life to track an individual for 10 days; but tagging such small creatures is far from easy.
"The challenge is first catching the dragonfly," said Professor Wilcove.
Once caught, each transmitter was attached with a couple of drops of superglue and some eye-lash adhesive."
--------- A site about tracking ants:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/707861.html