Studying roaches more

RomanBuck

RomanBuck

Simandoa
Do you think we as a whole should try to start a year long study on cockroach behavior? I was reading an article and it got me thinking about it. Maybe even start a website and start fundraising to do studies and such? I thought it sounded good but everything sounds great in your mind ;)

What do you think?

 
Any species one species that someone chooses, and anyone. What I mean is someone records what they are doing for maybe 10 mins a day and everyone who participates will compare each species with each other after a year

 
We do have an intriguing opportunity here. I've been doing essentially the same thing as happy, picking up observations casually.

I've been especially fascinated with the social behavior of Lucihormetica verrucosa, Rhyparobia maderae, and the feeding habits of my new Blaberus fusca. I'd be very happy to record what I see a certain species doing and add it to others' observations.

If we do collaborate seriously, some planning and structure would help make the observations, well, relevant. So we'd consider the colony conditions and whether we'd want to normalize them, and make sure we have observations from a variety of times of day.

 
Having lots of people who all have roaches, all across the U.S. does provide a great resource for information.

Unfortunately, if we recorded what they were doing for ten minutes a day, it would probably look like this:

10:00AM: Motionless

10:01AM: Motionless

10:02AM: Motionless....

LOL. Unless we were observing at night. And yeah, regulating colony conditions would be a must. I'd be willing to help you with this project Roman if you decide to do it!

 
If I have any of the species we decide on, I'll help out too. We just have to be sure everything is uniform, otherwise variables could highly effect our results.

 
Well that time was just a basis... Maybe half an hour or so??? I figured 10 mins didnt let you get too bored and feel like it was a total waste of time

 
I think a serious study would require a lot of time and commitment, but a lot of interesting facts could probably be discovered with casual systematic observation as well. I know I stare at my roaches pretty regularly, even if they are mostly motionless, haha.

I have read some rather interesting articles myself, like one which proved some hissers could be 'tamed' to an extent.. Actually, I'll try to attach it here, though maybe you guys know it already. Though trying to recreate the results of that study isn't proving very successful with my roaches for the time being.. :P

Habituation of hissing by Madagascar hissing cockroaches.pdf

 

Attachments

Packarat said:
I know I stare at my roaches pretty regularly, even if they are mostly motionless, haha.
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I observe my roaches during the night and they all move a lot. I'm what you call a night owl I guess.
 
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Sounds great, the more information out there the better. When I researched before getting my hissers there wasn't a lot of info out there, and what was out there was all the same generic information.

 
When did you search about Hissers Husker? You will find that for pretty much all animals it is hard to get information about, or at least for me it is hard.

 
I researched about a month ago, to see if they would be a good fit for me as pets. Everything I found was just rehash of the same information I found on another site. All very basic stuff. Then found this site, said to myself well the more in depth stuff Im betting I can get from this community. All the best pet info I have always gotten from forum communities.

 
Alex said:
How about a time lapse camera?? with a feed and heat source in view?
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Time lapse is great for studying their behavior. I recently completed a 24 hour sequence (actually the second half of a 48 hr sequence) and it's obvious that the bugs I have spend about 90 per cent of the time just sitting around. They make interesting choices when grouping together in the various compartments; some are loners.

You can see it here:

Early on you can see one of the critters dragging a bit of dry dog food closer to their "hotel" and at the 7:15 mark there is a molt.

At 16 minutes in length, the video is 90x real time. They were undisturbed for this sequence, so you can see they actually move very slowly.

 
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