Deropeltis, Parcoblatta, Zenoa & Pyrophorus Updates!

My Deropeltis sp. "Jinka" have been growing nicely, and they look so cute! 😊 The nymphs of this species appear to have very large heads, which makes them look very adorable, especially since they are also covered in fuzz.

While taking some pictures of one of my larger nymphs, it actually began to try and eat me, the hand I was holding it with had been used to grab the chick feed I put in their food bowl, so it smelled like food to the nymph, and it began to chew my skin up. After a couple minutes it actually started breaking through my skin, which was a little painful, so I gave it a piece of chick feed to nibble on during the rest of the photo shoot.

Here are those pictures, (the first one shows it eating me):

Overall this species seems to be doing pretty well in my care, very happy about that, I know they can be picky when it comes to humidity levels, so I'm glad my setup is working for them!

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My Parcoblatta caudelli are finally starting to mature, and boy do they look good! 😁 The males look pretty similar to other Parcoblatta males I've seen, but the females are quite unique, having wings almost as long as the males! So far it looks like I have two adult females and one adult male, and several nymphs that look ready to mature at any moment!

Anyway, here are some pictures of the adults.

Adult male

Adult female

I really love how the females of this species look, hopefully they'll start laying some oothecae soon!

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I haven't really seen my Zenoa picea larva doing anything lately, not making new tunnels or disturbing the substrate at all, so I decided to dig around it's deli cup and see if it either died or pupated. Luckily, it was the latter!! I don't know if anyone has ever recorded the pupal stage of this species or not, I certainly couldn't find pictures online of pupae from this species, so I took some of my own. 🙂

Here it is:

Very cool looking pupa, can't wait to see it mature!

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Lastly, just wanted to let you all know that I bought two more Pyrophorus noctilucus larvae from Gil Wizen this week, they arrived in great shape, and will hopefully do well in my care! (And not pupate prematurely or anything!). Also, I had to buy some rotten wood for them from Roman Buck over on FaceBook, as my Traeger sawdust that I am trying to ferment is taking much too long to do so, and I needed rotten wood for my Pyrophorus larvae ASAP! Roman shipped the wood out quickly and it is at a very nice stage of decay, hopefully my larvae will like it!

Well, that's gonna do it for today, hope everyone enjoyed this post, will see you all later! 😉