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Female hisser always on the food


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Are any antenna damaged? Mabye she has a hard time smelling the food. Try placing a banana or white bread directly in front of her see if she eats.

Yes, she has only one antenna and it is damage.

Everytime I remove her from the food zone she returns and stays there...she passes all the time pooping there... :wacko: ...to bad for other roaches.

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  • 3 weeks later...

antennae are definitely used to sense changes in the environement: vibration in the air, phoromones and so on. It give very little informations about food: when you add fruits or something, they sense something has change: moisture, maybe an odor... nothing more. Look at a roach, or at any insect, near his food. The antennae are moving, but it doesn't it the part of food he touch with the antennae: he taste his food with the palpae... that's their function ;)

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Roaches touch food with there antennae before getting close to it. I keep my place very wet so the banana is not making it wetter I think. More will come out of hiding when I put a banana there then bread. Banana draws them the most. They start moving there antennae a lot and come out soon after I put the banana in there containers but not most other things. I have read that they sense smell with there antennae and find food that way. Where did you read that they do not use there antennae much to find food? Shelfordella lateralis rarely put there legs on the food or they do but if they do not need to they dont.

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science class, entomology class (university and evening classes) and every serious book dealing with insects ;)

Antennae are not the only sensory organ. They have many function as I said, they can detect the food, but not taste it. Palpae have more precision, they can tastethe food, identify the soil, his moisture, composition and so on... Those organs are essential to find the food, when antennae are not (but they have loads of other functions that are highly useful ;) )

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for the food, antennae can detect "odors", but not at the sense we would understand if I remember it well. They detect there is something new, potentially food. When it is considered as a potential food, they go near it and still use the antennae to find it. The use the palpae when they are really close to it, they firstly touch the stuff with their palpae and they identify wht is it (food, soil, well, anything!), and when it is considered as a possible food, they start eating it with their mandibles. While eating, you've probably noticed that roaches often use their first pair of legs to maintain the food in place or taking it away. And if you look closely, you'll see what happen near their mouth: they chew little part of food to get pieces small enough to swallow with the mandibles, and the palpae are used to keep what their are chewing near the mandibles.

So antennae are mainly used to detect smells and things moving around them (they detect pheromones, give a first information about the presence of a potential source of food, they detect other roaches, predators and so on), while palpae are used to identify what they touch, the soil composition and to really taste and identify food ;)

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Yes, she has only one antenna and it is damage.

Everytime I remove her from the food zone she returns and stays there...she passes all the time pooping there... :wacko: ...to bad for other roaches.

You need to make sure the room she is in is above 70 degrees. If the room is below 70 degrees, hissers will stop eating! That goes for some other species as well, including Discoid.

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You need to make sure the room she is in is above 70 degrees. If the room is below 70 degrees, hissers will stop eating! That goes for some other species as well, including Discoid.

I have Insignis, Javanica, Princisia and Portentosa.

They were at 64.4 degrees and they didn´t stop eating, Javanicas even had babies.

They all poop so they are all eating...

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