How do Madagascar Cockroaches Make a Hissing Sound

5 min readMar 27, 2022

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Madagascar hissing cockroaches and some of their relatives can produce an audible hissing noise that almost sounds like a cat hissing. It would be like if you took a soda straw and blew through it really quickly. We’d get a whooshing of air and hear a little bit of a hissing noise.

Most insects that make noise do so by rubbing their body parts together or by employing vibrating membranes. Madagascar hissing cockroaches, however, exhale air through their breathing holes. In fact, hissing roaches may be the only known insect species that can generate such a sound in this manner.

How To Make A Madagascar Hissing Cockroach Hiss

These cockroaches tend to hiss more when they have been disturbed. There are three humane ways that you can elicit a hiss from these insects:

Picking them up.
Gently poking their side.
Startling them via sudden noises or flashes of light in their direction.
Place a male cockroach in the same area as another male cockroach.

How Does Hissing Benefit the Cockroach?

Four types of hisses with different social purposes and amplitude patterns have been identified: a male combat hiss, two types of courting and mating hisses and an alarm hiss (a loud snake-like hissing that startles predators).

These hissing noises are distinctly different. If you were to record them, you’d be able to distinguish between an alarm versus an aggression versus a courtship hiss.

Warning the entire colony about the predator

If the colony is disturbed, hissing serves as a warning. They signal to the rest of the colony of danger. This gives the members of the colony time to hide from whatever may be disturbing their nests.

Additionally, it works to scare off whatever may have disrupted the colony in the first place. If a predator approaches the cockroach’s territory, the hiss elicited by a male cockroach will frighten it. This may be enough to drive the predator to leave the area, thus leaving the colony unharmed.

Protection of the territory

See my full article “How Do Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches Fight?”

Courtship and Mating Rituals

Males will often include hissing in their elaborate courtship to attract female cockroaches. This ritual usually begins with performing posturing behavior. This increases its chances of catching attention from wandering females. The more females the male can attract, the more likely it is to prolong the longevity of its nest. Although the males hiss to draw in females, the females lure in the males by emitting an odor.

Interesting fact:

At the instant when the male pushes back and connects with the female, he emits an extraordinary series of hisses. A couple of researchers found that this made the female place her abdomen in a position permitting easy coupling. When the researchers muted males by stopping up the second pair of abdominal spiracles (that makes the hissing noise), they found that mating was not successful. They recorded the male sounds, and found a muted male could successfully mate when they played the recorded sounds back at the right moment.

How exactly is the hiss made?

Insects in general have openings on the side of their bodies called spiracles. These lead to air ducts and are essentially how insects breathe. Oxygen can diffuse in, and carbon dioxide can diffuse out. Spiracles are a common physical trait of insects of every kind. All cockroaches possess them, be they wild species or household pests.

Spiracles Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches

Hissing cockroaches have specially-modified spiracles. They are slots peppered up and down the body. The spiracle valves extend from the roach’s respiratory tract. If they expel air from them quickly, it produces the hissing noise. They can open and close their spiracles at the same time. By opening and closing, they let in air. According to the Journal of Experimental Biology, the Madagascar hissing cockroach can voluntarily contract their abdominal musculature.

Air fills the thoracic cavity, or the hollow portion of its chest when these spiracles are closed. When it chooses to expel this air, all abdominal spiracles are quickly forced open. This action produces the infamous hissing sound. These roaches are also unique in that they have thoracic spiracles, giving them more control over how they push out air, which is what produces the hissing sound.

See also my article “Anatomy Of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches”

Do Female Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches Hiss?

Both male and female can produce a hissing sound, but they will do so for different reasons. Females will tend to hiss less often than a male cockroach. This is usually because females are not responsible for protecting the colony. Likewise, they do not have to worry about competing for partners.

According to Bioscience Horizons, female Madagascar hissing cockroaches mainly hiss when disturbed by:

Other unfamiliar cockroaches
Other organisms
Sudden sounds or lights

This allows the females to warn of danger or intimidate predators.

Can Baby Hissing Cockroaches Hiss?

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are not able to hiss at birth because the abdominal spiracles have not yet developed. Nymphs remain in the care of their mother for about 7 months until they have fully matured and developed an exoskeleton. The abdominal spiracles they use to hiss are also formed at this time.