Description

These medium-sized roaches are dark-brown to black and typically live in or under rotting logs. Panesthia exclusively feed on wood. An interesting fact about these cockroaches is that adults have wings when they moult to maturity however most of the time they immediately chew their (or others) own wings off! It is possible that when 2 roaches chew each others wings it may be for courtship or maybe they just really hate having wings, perhaps it interferes with their burrowing behaviour, and sometimes wings may harbour mite or fungus infestations.

As for care, we use wood in every aspect of their enclosure. The base substrate is comprised of moisture holding peat (about 30-40%) and the rest is made up of oak wood. We take oak wood pellets (most types of wood will also work if free of additives) used for barbecues and soak them in water until they reach the consistency of very wet sawdust. This substrate should be at least 5cm deep as they like to burrow, the most crucial part of their care however is pulpy decomposing wood, which we spread chunks throughout the substrate and on the surface, which also has some bark for hides. Other than that, just keep the enclosure moist (and maybe give them some occasional fruit as a treat) and they are easy to care for.

These roaches don’t bite and can be handled easily but they do have very strong legs with long spines that may tickle if they try to prise your fingers apart.

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