Field Notes: Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches (Patreon)

While we don't have the resources to travel all the way to the island of Madagascar to film giant hissing cockroaches, we were fortunate that a healthy colony is located only a few hours' away from San Francisco.

For this upcoming episode, we visited the Sierra Research Laboratories, where a team of scientists conducts research in urban and veterinary entomology. (They kindly assisted us with our previous video about bed bugs, too.) 

This company maintains six different species of cockroaches in their facility, including pesky brown-banded cockroaches – which also make a cameo in our video. Technician Azucena Velazquez wrangled the cockroaches as they emitted their signature hissing sound as lead producer and cinematographer Josh Cassidy filmed them in our staged environment. 

Fortunately for our Deep Look peeps, producer Jenny Oh was able to overcome her phobia of cockroaches to successfully produce this video which premieres next week – and our Patreon supporters will get an early look this Friday!