Staff of organizations dealing with pet-related issues in the country say that demand for insects has grown noticeably over the past five years, and they attribute this to the fact that city dwellers are forced to live in increasingly cramped conditions.
Peter Nobbs, a member of the leadership of the Australian Animal Protection Council, says that due to the crowdedness of urban existence, many people cannot afford to keep a dog or cat, but insects or small reptiles are simply ideal for apartment living. But the real favorites have become cockroaches. By the way, the largest cockroaches on Earth come from the Green Continent.
“Well, of course, it is a somewhat unusual pet,” John Olive, an employee of a company supplying giant cockroaches to the Australian market, admitted in an interview with Reuters. “But children can play with them and not be afraid of anything, and they require almost no care.”
At the same time, suppliers and owners of pet stores actively point out that exterminating cockroaches in an apartment will cease to be a problem. After all, domesticated cockroaches are not at all those brown-winged insects that love garbage dumps and the space behind kitchen cabinets. In their opinion, the giant burrowing cockroach, also known as the rhinoceros cockroach, which lives in the wild in the warm state of Queensland in northeastern Australia, is best suited for the role of a pet. These insects, with the scientific name Macropanesthia Rhinoceros, grow to the size of a human palm - up to 8 centimeters in length - and weigh up to 35 grams. It is also known that their lifespan reaches 10 years.
Some stores, to avoid the unpleasant word “cockroach,” call these insects “litter beetles,” “rain beetles,” or even “macro-beetles.” “They are charming creatures,” says Sue Hasenpusch, an employee of the supplier company The Australian Insect Farm. “They are clean, they have absolutely no odor, and there is absolutely nothing terrible about them - except for the name ‘cockroach.’”
Insects have long been very popular in Japan, where live beetles can be bought even in street vending machines.
A domestic cockroach can be kept in a medium-sized container with a few centimeters of sandy soil and fed with dry eucalyptus leaves. One company even sells special “kits for giant litter beetles,” consisting of a house, sand, food, and three young insects. The whole pleasure costs 71.5 Australian dollars ($45).
According to some owners, “macro-beetles” love to be stroked and even respond to names.
_