September 30th, 2014

On Friday, we played the Instincts for Survival game with a grade seven class from Laurelwood Public School. I used a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach to talk about instincts, and neat behaviours animals use to survive. The cockroaches hiss at predators as a defense strategy. Males hiss at other males to establish dominance, and males will also hiss at females to woo them.

After the class left, we were cleaning up, and our cockroach had given birth. There were 30 babies in the aquarium with momma.

It’s not really a “live” birth though, because the female cockroach lays a cylindrical egg sack called an ootheca. She somehow sucks the ootheca back into her abdomen and carries it around until the babies hatch. “Ootheca” is an excellent word to know for Scrabble.