Madagascar hissing cockroach
Gromphadorhina portentosa
— Where the name comes from
Portentosa is Latin for “prodigious”, but with the shadow the word carried originally: a portentum was an omen, an event outside the natural order that the ancients read as a sign. For an insect eight centimetres long that hisses like a snake, it is the right name. The genus is usually read as “sow-snout”, from the Greek rhís, rhinós, the nose, after the two humps on the male’s thorax.
— Facts
- Group
- Insects · Insecta
- Order
- Cockroaches and termites
- Habitat
- Leaf litter and rotting logs of the rainforest
- Range
- Madagascar
- Size
- 5–8 cm; the male has two horns on the thorax
- Diet
- Fallen fruit and decaying plant matter
- Lifespan
- 2–5 years
— Characteristics
- 01
Neither sex has wings: it does not fly and does not stridulate with wings.
- 02
The male has two thoracic bosses and uses them to shove rivals.
- 03
The female keeps the ootheca inside her body and gives birth to live young.
— What sets it apart
The hiss is the only thing it shares with snakes, and it is produced in a way almost no other insect uses: not by rubbing two body parts together, as crickets and cicadas do, but by forcing air out of the spiracles of the abdomen, the openings through which it breathes. It is therefore a sound of breath, not of friction — the closest thing to a voice an insect possesses. It makes several: one of alarm when touched, one males exchange in duels, and one the male keeps for courtship.
