As per request, I'm posting this question here as well as the original site. I have a small colony of adult... discoids? I'm fairly sure anyways, I got them at the past Expo here. They weren't supposed to be selling them at all, so it was pretty much a 'give him your money and then hide the roaches' situation. But I found a strange dried up looking... something? Looks like a once was worm. Not sure. Can someone let me know what it is? Cause it wasn't there a bit ago.

This is it:



Here's the roaches:



Thanks for any and all replies!
Jaz

Dear Jaz,

this is an ootheca, which has the female lost. These species is ovoviviparous and the females returns the ootheca in a "breeding place" (egg case? - I don't know it in English, yet).

best regards
Ingo

Yep, an aborted ootheca. Live bearing roaches form an ootheca and retract it back into the abdomen for gestation. It only is expelled as young hatch or stress conditions that cause an abortion.

You were lucky to find one, because aborted ootheca's usually are quickly devoured by a roach colony before you even see them, they have great nutrition.

Ooh, how ironic, I just found my first turkistan roach ootheca.

Cool! That is so very neat. How big is it in comparison to the roach itself?