Name A Bronx Zoo Madagascar Hissing Cockroach for your Valentine

NEW This Year: The first-ever plush cockroach and/or artisan chocolates

Seal it with a ‘hiss’ at www.bronxzoo.com/roach

Video: https://youtu.be/YQz1RQq6edw

Photos: (credit: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS):  http://bit.ly/2jai73N

NEW YORK – Jan. 24, 2017 – Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and there is one last minute gift that will last forever. WCS’s Bronx Zoo has brought back the Name-a-Roach – a light-hearted way to make sure your loved one knows your feelings will last a lifetime.

The zoo is again offering the opportunity to name a new crop of giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches for Valentine’s Day 2017. Each gift comes with a colorful certificate emailed to your loved one announcing that a cockroach has been named in his or her honor.

For a $10 donation, your loved one, or unloved one, will receive the certificate to cherish for years to come, featuring the name chosen for your Valentine’s roach. New this year, a $35 donation, the certificate will come with the first-ever plush Madagascar hissing cockroach or a box of gourmet chocolates from artisan chocolatier Nunu Chocolate Company in Brooklyn, NY. A $50 donation will send the whole Valentine’s Day package that includes the certificate, plush, and chocolates.

The original Name-a-Roach launched in 2011, and thousands of hopeless romantics from around the world have named Madagascar hissing cockroaches at WCS’s Bronx Zoo after their favorite loved one, “ex,” or mother-in-law. Previous names chosen have been inspired by politics, music, movies, and more. The possibilities are limitless.

The name-a-roach program is all in good fun and will help WCS further its mission to save wildlife and wild places in New York and around the world.

The zoo has plenty of roaches to name with thousands of the super-sized bugs on exhibit in Madagascar!—an award-winning habitat for lemurs, crocodiles, and many other species from the African island nation.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are the world’s largest roach species reaching nearly four-inches long.  The namesake hissing noise is emitted as a defense mechanism.  Like nearly every roach species, Madagascar hissing cockroaches are not considered pests and rarely enter homes.