Mystery Blaberus Solved... Sorta.

Well, the mystery Blaberus Anthony Green sent me for identification several months ago have finally matured, and I have conferred extensively with Kyle Kandilian from Roachcrossing and Brandon Maines of Magnificent Beasts as to what they could be. They were erroneously sold to Anthony as "Blaberus giganteus" by Paul Sutton (of Paul's Pills), who was also sold them under that name by some random person at an expo years ago. So unfortunately lineage tracing only turned up a dead end, but regardless these are obviously quite differently colored and a lot smaller than actual giganteus.

As for what they actually are, Kyle, Brandon and I are all in agreement that they seem to be something in the light winged Blaberus craniifer complex, possibly a cross between the "fusca" and "peruvianus" lines, as the markings are sort of an intergrade between the two. So while it's technically possible they may not be species hybrids, they are almost certainly at least strain/locality cross. Unless it's an untracked stock from a different import that was never given it's own proper strain name, just constantly traded erroneously as "Giant Cave Roaches" or B.giganteus. But because there's no way of knowing that, they can't truly be accurately or responsibly labeled as anything more specific than Blaberus sp.. 😔

That being said, it is a very good looking (probable) mutt line, with fairly clean and consistent coloration. Here are some pictures of them:

Female

Male #1

Male #2

Male #3

Female and Male #1

Very nice looking mutts, that I honestly might just keep around for the heck of it (but I won't ever sell them).

Anyways, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, I hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉