REALLY odd B. dubia behavior...

[Mister Internet]

So here's a weird story...

I'm changing all my snakes over to cypress mulch bedding, and the cypress I picked up the other day was pretty wet. Wasn't drying fast enough outside for my needs, so I brought it all downstairs to my "critter room" and laid it all out on a plastic tarp so it would dry more quickly. My dubia colony is about 10 feet away from the mulch, and has a screen lid... here's the weird part:

As soon as I opened the mulch and spread it out, the roaches went insane.... I mean, literally insane. You know how they "swarm" around food when you throw it in? Well, imagine that times about 5... thousands of roaches, just tearing around the inside of their encolsure like I'd just dropped in a centipede or something. I know the cypress was wet and pretty organic-smelling, but seriously, would that = food to roaches? Wet wood?

Anyone else ever experience anyhting like this?

 

[Bigboy]

There are a a few kinds of roaches that will munch wood, but I was unaware that B. dubia is one of them.

 

[Stylopidae]

Pavlov's dog times five thousand. Do you prepare your roach meals in the same area?

Pavlov was originaly going to experiment with dog saliva to test whether or not the substance begins the digestion process. He eventually discovered that the dogs would salivate at strange times, times that had nothing to do with food. Wanting to know why, he set up an experiment to see if the behaivior had something to do with food...and you can read the rest in any psych textbook.

If this turns out to be the case, maybe we could learn to train them...real life Joe's Apartment material.

 

[Mister Internet]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Pavlovian repsonse... their receiving food is always in the form of the lid opening. This was literally just opening the bag in the vicinity... the only stimulus created from this was the odor of wet wood...

 

[Beardo]

Maybe you could toss a bit of the mulch in the cage and see what the roaches do...I doubt it would hurt if they ate it. Very interesting observation.

 

[RoachmanDan]

Roaches are very sensitive to increases and decreases in humidity. I'm thinking perhaps if the mulch was damp enough and you had spread it out that well it would have jacked up the humidity level in the room considerably as the moisture in it evaporated. It would be similar to misting the cage with a sprayer but on a much larger scale of course. I have experienced the same effect when turning on a humidifier in the same room as the roaches.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

I've noticed that roaches also react to CO2, for example if you breathe directly into the colony. I couldn't imagine though that you had a CO2 bomb there when opening the bag.

I would not toss any of it into the colony directly but rather set up a separate little box where a few individuals could have a go at the substrate. Just as a test. But if they like it, that surely sounds as an interesting food alternative!

 

[Mister Internet]

Roaches are very sensitive to increases and decreases in humidity. I'm thinking perhaps if the mulch was damp enough and you had spread it out that well it would have jacked up the humidity level in the room considerably as the moisture in it evaporated. It would be similar to misting the cage with a sprayer but on a much larger scale of course. I have experienced the same effect when turning on a humidifier in the same room as the roaches.

This is interesting info... the mulch was not soggy or wet, but was definitely messy to the touch. I'm still a bit dubious that spreading some mulch would crank the humidity that high that quickly, as this is a fairly large room, and it was only four bags of mulch... but, I can't say for sure. How long did it take when you used that humidifier? I only ask because they started going nuts in like 15-30 seconds after I opened the first bag...

 

[Beardo]

I've noticed that roaches also react to CO2, for example if you breathe directly into the colony. I couldn't imagine though that you had a CO2 bomb there when opening the bag.

That is more likely the roaches reacting to the physical stimulation of your breath, not the the CO2....if you breathe/blow on just about any invert, you'll get a reaction.....doesn't mean they're reacting to the chemical makeup of your breath lol.