I was feeding the many live insects we are using to teach second graders science in Insect Discovery a few weeks ago and came across this:
molting roach
He had JUST molted, leaving this enormous pasty white, squishy Madagascar hissing cockroach in the cage. It was so awful looking I just had to get a photo – so I could remember it forever. :)
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The Dragonfly Woman 
It’s Just beautiful :)
Moulting in arthropods has always fascinated me. I once saw a pale Periplenata americana beside it’s regularly-coloured moult when I was a kid. And I was so weirded out that I thought I saw the ghost of a now-dead-cockroach whose body lay still! :)
Interesting! Someone I showed the photo to right after I took it said that it looked just like a ghost. My first thoughts went straight to some sort of creepy alien myself. :)
Ah, so thaaat’s what the white roaches are. I just assumed they were albino or something.
I think lots of people do! Most insects are super pasty right after they molt and then darken up later. This roach was nearly black by the time his exoskeleton hardened!
I had no idea. Learn something new everyday. Cockroaches aren’t exactly my favorite. I’m glad you have a bonafide memory made!
It occurs to me that it probably seems like I LOVE roaches because I’ve mentioned them several times in the last 5 or 6 posts. Roaches are, in fact, far from the top of my list of favorites too, but I’m working with a lot of them this semester so they keep coming up!
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