Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Sully...or should we say... Silvia?....or should we say...Cilantro

Every year, my alma mater hosts "Ag Field Day", a day of celebration for Cook College campus that involves animal shows, tasty food, vendors of unique items, and much more. Every year that I've attended, I've been particularly attracted to the bug "expo" the Entomology Department brings. I loved playing with the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches and this year, I bought one. When I bought Sully, he was about the size of a small firefly and kind of puny looking. Recently, Sully had his first molt and turned into a pudgy little beetle-looking thing. This was him after he molted and went back to normal pigment:


Big chubby boy! He literally became THREE times the size he was when I got him. Since the molt, he started growing out a little bit, and got slightly more chunky.


Slightly more chunky bug!

But the last few days, he seems to have .... elongated. Somehow.



I feel like he's still the same width. 
However, someone on r/entomology has brought up that judging by the ventral plate (not to mention lack of the horns that male hissers get)....Sully might be a Silvia. So for now, as I was quite fond of the name Sully, and I'm not too sold on Silvia just yet, I'll be sticking to the gender neutral "Cilantro". 

Aside from getting longer and wider, Cilantro has gotten some spunk. I read that the warmer their environment, the more active (and sexually active) hissers get. And Cilantro has been running around like crazy the last few days. Usually, he's easy to handle, and kind of chills on the back of my hand while I type, but the last few days I can barely hold him without him running all about. Teenagers....jeez... 



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