Simandoa Cave Roach: Extinct in the Wild

In the Simandou mountains of Guinea there was one cave, and on the bat guano covering its floor lived a cockroach found nowhere else on earth. Not long after scientists described it, the cave was mined away for bauxite. Every Simandoa cave roach alive today descends from the handful of specimens those scientists carried out with them, which makes this the only animal we sell that no longer exists in the wild at all.

Introduction

This is Simandoa conserfariam, described in 2004 by Louis Roth and Piotr Naskrecki from surveys run in the Pic de Fon forest on the slopes of the Simandou range. The IUCN lists it as Extinct in the Wild, and it has not been recorded there since 2002. It survives entirely in captivity, in zoo collections and in the hands of hobbyists, which is why you will see it traded as the Simandoa Cave Roach, the Extinct Cave Roach or simply the Extinct in the Wild Roach. Keeping a colony is not quite conservation, and it would be overselling it to pretend otherwise, but the species does continue because people took the trouble to breed it.

Appearance

Better looking than most people expect a cockroach to be. Nymphs start out plain and dark, then develop yellow banding across the abdomen as they grow, and adults finish with speckled wings in olive-grey, bright yellow abdominal striping and reddish legs. They have wings but do not fly. What they do very well is climb, including up glass and smooth plastic, which matters for how you house them.

Care

Think cave: warm, humid, and dim. They want an enclosure kept damp with regular misting rather than allowed to dry out, warmth from a thermostat-controlled mat on the side of the tank rather than underneath, and low light, since they actively avoid bright conditions. The enclosure has to be genuinely escape-proof, because they climb smooth surfaces easily and move quickly when disturbed. A tight lid is the first line, and a band of petroleum jelly around the top few centimetres is worth adding. Inside, pile in cork bark, hollow tubes and stacked bark so they can wedge themselves out of sight, and floor it with leaf litter, rotting hardwood and organic topsoil, which they will feed on directly. Our flake soil and the botanicals in our accessories range cover the substrate, and a springtail culture underneath keeps mould in check in what is necessarily a damp setup.

Diet

Detritivores, and undemanding with it. Leaf litter and decaying wood form the base and should always be there. On top of that they take fruit and vegetables readily, with apple, orange, carrot, potato and squash all reliable, and a little protein now and then in the form of fish flake or dried insect food. Clear away uneaten fresh food after a day or so, particularly given the humidity they are kept in.

Breeding

Females retain the egg case inside the body and produce live young rather than laying, which is typical of the family and makes for a colony that quietly builds rather than one you find egg cases scattered through. Reproduction is steady rather than rapid. Given stable warmth, humidity and food, a group establishes and grows without much intervention, and given the animal's history there is something genuinely satisfying about a colony that keeps going under your care.

Who is this for?

Someone who wants an animal with a story, and who will take the escape-proofing seriously. It suits collectors, educators and anyone drawn to keeping something with real conservation weight behind it, and it is a talking point unlike anything else in an invertebrate room. It is not the right pick if you want a species you can handle freely, since these are fast and inclined to bolt, nor if a climbing, quick-moving roach in the house is going to unsettle the household. Worth saying plainly as well: this is a tropical cave animal, so an escapee cannot establish in a British home. If you want a roach you can pick up and show a child, the docile Madagascar Hissing Cockroach is the better choice, and for pure colour the metallic Emerald Cockroach is hard to beat. The rest are in our cockroach collection.

Every colony we send is captive-bred and covered by our live arrival guarantee, travelling with moss and cover inside a double-walled box. We dispatch Monday to Thursday by Royal Mail next day before 1pm, so nothing sits in the postal system across a weekend.