Albino dubia!!!

[Mephibosheth1]

Hey guys!!!! I touched the roaches with my bare hands today!! On purpose! And I didn't even scream once

Couldn't link the picture over here, but here's for you Mootworm


http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3vr9wk/

[MootWorm]

Couldn't link the picture over here, but here's for you Mootworm


http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3vr9wk/

Bahaha pretty much.

[Mike41793]

I love dubias. My question - can you tell the sex before they are adults? Some of them are more long and narrow and others are more wide. Does that have anything to do with it or is that just individual variation?

I noticed this too. This is just a guess but i think the longer narrower ones are females and the rounder, wider ones are males. The narrower ones have the same body segments as the adult females. I think the rounder ones have smoother backs bc they're the wings of the immature males.

I could be 100% wrong though, like i said, just a guess.

[MootWorm]

I love dubias. My question - can you tell the sex before they are adults? Some of them are more long and narrow and others are more wide. Does that have anything to do with it or is that just individual variation?

Eh I don't really pay attention to that, at least until they develop wings lol. Theyre so fast and wiggly it'd be hard to keep track of who's what. It would be interesting to separate the 'males' and 'females' you identify, then see what sex they mature into. Experiment, anyone?

[Mike41793]

I don't think i have the attention span for the experiment lmao

[MootWorm]

Eh just stick em in a butter tub with a few airholes and a chunk of egg crate. Boom, done

[treeboa]

There was a cricket shortage??

Yah, about 5 years ago (maybe more, I forget) there was a huge die off of domestic brown crickets because of a virus. Only a couple cricket breeders escaped, everyone else lost their entire colonies. A lot of the cricket suppliers now are using different species of crickets that are immune from the virus. During this time roach breeding really took off because keepers were looking for alternatives because a lot of animals need more movement to trigger eating than mealworms provide.

[AdamL8]

I love dubias. My question - can you tell the sex before they are adults? Some of them are more long and narrow and others are more wide. Does that have anything to do with it or is that just individual variation?

You can tell but it doesn't have anything to do with the body shape as far as I've noticed. I originally thought the same thing but it seems to just be the way that some of them develop. It has to do with the segments on the underside right at the rear end. The males will have 2 in the space that a female has 1. You can see this on all sizes of nymphs although it is obviously more difficult the smaller they are. It can also help to have several in front of you so you have at least 1 male and 1 female for comparison. These are not my pictures but they show what I'm talking about.

Male


Female