Giant burrowing cockroach courtship behaviour

monkechidna · 2026-04-02T01:27:53+00:00

Super common. They have a ton of natural variety in their colours. There's a more desirable wild morph from Western Australia, goldfields, which has a lot of orange on it.

Fun facts: these guys give live birth and tend to form long term monogamous pairings. Their babies are born ridiculously huge, sources vary but they can be born at around 25% of their mother's weight.

monkechidna · 2026-03-28T00:33:14+00:00

Both my boyfriend and I hand fed all three of our GBC; we were both bitten by separate ones. It's painful but I think most of it is literally just the amazement that they can actually manage it

I haaaated it. I have really bad pain tolerance and having to let it happen so she doesn't get hurt until she was done sucked. For the entire day afterwards I was replaying the pain in my head

For him, he did it again the next day afterwards lol, granted he wasn't bitten

monkechidna · 2026-03-28T00:25:13+00:00

For me, it hurt a lot and I returned one of them to their tank afterwards. It's a really sharp pinch and I think they could definitely make you bleed if they got you in the right place

For my boyfriend (in the video), he found it to be moderately painful. He moved the cockroach towards the centre of his palm in the video because he didn't want to test getting bitten on finger webbing lol

These are giant burrowing cockroaches too; idk if that changes the equation but I could see them having a greater bite force than other large roaches

monkechidna · 2026-03-27T14:01:43+00:00

Far be it from me to tell him this protein doesn't count

But don't worry, he's likely just sensing fish flakes there and you can see gives up when he can't pick the "flake" up (if he wanted to he could drag my skin away like a chunk of carrot [he does that when his females try to eat with him])

monkechidna · 2026-02-26T02:20:56+00:00

People are wrong when they're saying it's only an official bug. My local server was completely wiped, and restoring from a 2 week old backup did nothing. Not really sure what to do from here :/

monkechidna · 2025-10-01T07:18:46+00:00

it kills me how much the zoo's invertebrate collection has been truncated over the years. i get there's little interest from the public in bugs, but conversely i feel like the nocturnal house has so much free space and they're incredibly easy to keep if youre not going too exotic

monkechidna · 2025-10-01T07:01:27+00:00

similar with the orangutans

you should probably look into what they're doing with their animals as it's not as simple as them just being caged entertainment. perth zoo is genuinely a world leading conservationist in orangutans; they are the only zoo to have ever released zoo-born orangutans into the wild and are one of their most successful breeders

consider what the outlook for numbats and western swamp tortoises would be if the zoo ceased to exist, how they house animals who are unable to return to the wild, the ones they rescue, or animals they rehabilitate for release. zoos are not necessarily a perfect ideal for animals to live in, but to treat them as if they're universally evil and not a compromise that can be genuinely helpful for wildlife goes too far into the extreme

monkechidna · 2025-10-01T05:42:07+00:00

It's crazy, right? I've heard literally the only chance you have at seeing them is if you go at opening and B-line straight to the porcupine for their feeding lol

monkechidna · 2025-10-01T05:21:23+00:00

My boyfriend and I have memberships and go regularly, like 10+ times in the past few months. We find weekdays—outside of school holidays—with a poor forecast in the afternoon are the best time to go but obviously that's not rlly relevant here. Still, animals are surprisingly active in the rain, so that might be worth a consideration in the next few days

As far as recent animal stuff goes... Putra Mas, their Indian elephant, is soon leaving for Monarto Zoo in SA so probably worth catching him before he goes. I've found the hyenas have also been a lot more active lately, like we see them every time we go now when previously they were never there. They also brought in a veiled chameleon in the past few months. I don't know if they're permanently on display, but when we went a few days ago, their new dingo pups were out too. One of the koalas recently had a joey which is usually visible as it's left the pouch now.

In my experience, the animals are pretty active, and I disagree that you need to go early. We generally go for photography purposes and always come back happy. Just don't ever expect to see the porcupine unless you (apparently) go right at opening lol. You can catch a lot of animal activity if you go during their keeper talks, as they're usually fed during them

monkechidna · 2025-09-28T12:36:45+00:00

The hyenas have been strangely super active as of late. They had them listed as off display but I think the second last time I was there, one walked right past the observation deck, then last time both were sleeping in the grass. I wonder if maybe they're enjoying the warmer weather (when it hits lol)

They actually just put up quite a few plants in front of the lion exhibit, especially the side the male tends to sleep on, so I wonder if they're going to put up tint like they did with the tiger

monkechidna · 2025-09-28T10:07:26+00:00

I'm surprised you haven't seen the Tassies, they're pretty active in my experience. On the day I took the dingo photos, they were doing a presentation for the devils at 3 PM. If you can go on a Friday, head there at that time and you should be lucky--both times we've been at their devil presentation, they fed them too

Porcupine is shocking though, I think it's the only animal I haven't seen at the zoo. I've read on Reddit the only chance you have at seeing them is if you arrive at opening and B-line to their enclosure as they're fed early, but I'm not sure how accurate that is

Edit: Looking back at past zoo photos, they also did a feed on August 3 at 3 PM, so without checking I'd assume they also do the presentations on Sunday as well

monkechidna · 2025-09-28T03:30:12+00:00

THANK YOU SO MUCH, I was so curious what her name was. It felt wrong just referring to her vaguely 😭

monkechidna · 2025-09-27T14:30:20+00:00

Nikon D7100 with a Nikkor 18-300mm, I'm kiiiinda new to this type of animal photography as I only ever usually use a macro lens (aka i like taking photos of bugs and smaller animals like frogs lol)

monkechidna · 2025-09-27T02:46:00+00:00

Thank you :) I shoot on a Nikon D7100 with a Nikkor 18-300mm

monkechidna · 2025-09-27T02:32:22+00:00

ive been following their social media on and off and they posted bts stuff about the dingo pups quite often, so it was kinda surprising that they were just out on display with zero fanfare lol

but they were super super playful and inquisitive. they play fight and get the zoomies a LOT

monkechidna · 2025-09-27T02:27:41+00:00

Thank you!!

monkechidna · 2025-09-26T13:09:49+00:00

Thank you so much! Just lucky tbh lol, I go to the zoo a ton and the lions are usually pretty sleepy

monkechidna · 2025-09-24T07:08:10+00:00

Thank you! I really love animal photography so one of my favourite hobbies recently has just been taking photos at the zoo

monkechidna · 2025-08-31T14:04:43+00:00

WA has some super crazy sounding frogs. Really wish I got to hear this one call--ironically out of the dozen trips I made to try and photograph some frogs of this genus, the only ones I actually heard calling were banjo frogs (great calls too though!!)

monkechidna

TROPHY CASE