The Stowaway!!!

Ty Schaben Order Pt. 8/8

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Well, apparently there's one last addition to my collection from this package, it was hiding along with the Gromphadorhina sp. "Unidentified", at first I thought it was just a small nymph of that species, but it's molted and has much longer antennae than small hisser nymphs have, and looks different than hisser nymphs under closer inspection... I believe it's a nymph of a Rhyparobia species, either R.maderae or R.sp. "Gold", (which some say are the same species, as they can apparently hybridize with ease). I've never kept Rhyparobia before, guess I'm keeping one nymph now LOL, might as well rear it up and see an adult in person. 😄

I'm just gonna leave it in with the hissers for now, as Rhyparobia and Gromphadorhina actually seem to have pretty similar husbandry needs, and it's doing well with them.

I believe all life stages can climb, adults seem like they'd be too bulky to fly, but are fully winged. When disturbed I believe adults can hiss or stridulate, and all life stages will apparently try to stab you with their leg spikes and will expel frass on you should you grab at them. A feisty genus, and also rather uncommonly kept here in the US, not due to difficulty, but rather a lack of interest, they are kinda plain looking roaches...

Here are some pictures of the little stowaway:

Cute little thing, don't know how it got mixed in with my hissers, and that actually makes me concerned other hissers have been mixed in as well, either in my group or in the main culture they came from, which would suck... But hopefully that's not the case and this was just a fluke escapee Rhyparobia that somehow found it's way in with these hissers, time will tell I suppose. 

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, and for this particular order! 😄 Hopefully everyone enjoyed, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉