I personally was not at all looking forward to the roach. And what can I say? I was right. The animals are dead and there are gloves, but still the hairs on my neck stood on end when I looked at the many specimens. I hate insects.

In the zoology lecture everything was discussed in detail, and our current professor put a lot of effort into making us more familiar with the insects. For me with only moderate success, unfortunately.

I was happy that we only had to label a drawing of the face and one leg on our own, especially after the worm from last week. I didn’t realize that the crunching of the hard shell would stay in my ears for several days. I also didn’t know that roaches can produce real fat.

No, not only that, our well-fed specimens are truly fat!

That made it more difficult to find things among all the blubber. More difficult, but manageable. Sometimes we just had to look at bit, and if we couldn’t find something then the competent student assistants came and helped us.

As I said, I still don’t like roaches, but there was a small surprise for us that changed everything...

Living specimens of hissing cockroaches from Madagascar.

For everyone who feels disgusted, the animals are much, much larger and happy to sit on your hand. Where the name comes from is self-explanatory as soon as you touch their antenna a bit: They can really hiss!

Jasmin, 1st semester, Biology