While I am not fond of the game- here I mean American football.
Our zoo does a lot of educational outreach stuff. Elementary schools, public events, etc.
One of the most popular things (though less sciencey) is the cockroach races.
For those of you unfamiliar with the idea. We use Discoid roaches with blotches of nail polish to distinguish them. Any quick moving nonflying species should work. Thigmotaxis is a must. The idea is that they are placed in a bottomless can in the center of a board and when the can is removed they run for the edge. There is a big circle painted, and which ever roach gets out first wins.
If there is an event near you, go see it, it is a lot of fun.
Anyway, my idea for roachfootball grew out of watching the discoids and their dog food.
The first time I gave them some a midsized nymph climbed out of the substrate, grabbed a pellet and ran off. He burrowed back into the substrate with the dog food pellet. About 10 seconds later he came boiling up out of the substrate and ran with the pellet followed by about 4 other nymphs.
Similar fondness for the dogfood is consistent.
So my idea is a tank, 20, maybe 30 gallons. Whatever, something with a decent foot print.
At each end is a rectangle of the fake grass carpet stuff they use for indoor golf putting. These are painted with fake roach/bug team names as endzones. And between is a light dusting of substrate (maybe, that's a point I am fairly uncertain about).
There is however many roaches in the tank it takes to equal 2 american football teams (I am sure I could look it up, but I would just forget it by the time I need to know).
A piece of dogfood is placed in the middle and the likely roach scramble is followed until the "football" is carried into one of the end zones. The team not owning the endzone (I think) gets a point, or wins the game, or whatever.
The natural desire is to paint the roaches in two team colors. But as there is no way to make the red roach go in the right direction to have the red team win, I think it is a bad idea.
Painting two mascot roaches might be awesome.
I may need to home-make bright colored dogfood like footballs, or use day glow trout pellets, or other such.
Anyway, I was hoping for some ideas or feedback before I ran a test on this. Point out what I am not thinking through.
Coloradans are big into the Broncos. Any roach/bug related pun on the name would be triple sweet. "Broachcos" is so/so, but might be good enough if coupled with a symbol of a roach in the classic Broncos horse pose. Otherwise better fitting prof team names parodied as bugs.
Or, the school team (Rams) and the rival school (Buffaloes) would also be good names to parody.
Our zoo does a lot of educational outreach stuff. Elementary schools, public events, etc.
One of the most popular things (though less sciencey) is the cockroach races.
For those of you unfamiliar with the idea. We use Discoid roaches with blotches of nail polish to distinguish them. Any quick moving nonflying species should work. Thigmotaxis is a must. The idea is that they are placed in a bottomless can in the center of a board and when the can is removed they run for the edge. There is a big circle painted, and which ever roach gets out first wins.
If there is an event near you, go see it, it is a lot of fun.
Anyway, my idea for roachfootball grew out of watching the discoids and their dog food.
The first time I gave them some a midsized nymph climbed out of the substrate, grabbed a pellet and ran off. He burrowed back into the substrate with the dog food pellet. About 10 seconds later he came boiling up out of the substrate and ran with the pellet followed by about 4 other nymphs.
Similar fondness for the dogfood is consistent.
So my idea is a tank, 20, maybe 30 gallons. Whatever, something with a decent foot print.
At each end is a rectangle of the fake grass carpet stuff they use for indoor golf putting. These are painted with fake roach/bug team names as endzones. And between is a light dusting of substrate (maybe, that's a point I am fairly uncertain about).
There is however many roaches in the tank it takes to equal 2 american football teams (I am sure I could look it up, but I would just forget it by the time I need to know).
A piece of dogfood is placed in the middle and the likely roach scramble is followed until the "football" is carried into one of the end zones. The team not owning the endzone (I think) gets a point, or wins the game, or whatever.
The natural desire is to paint the roaches in two team colors. But as there is no way to make the red roach go in the right direction to have the red team win, I think it is a bad idea.
Painting two mascot roaches might be awesome.
I may need to home-make bright colored dogfood like footballs, or use day glow trout pellets, or other such.
Anyway, I was hoping for some ideas or feedback before I ran a test on this. Point out what I am not thinking through.
Coloradans are big into the Broncos. Any roach/bug related pun on the name would be triple sweet. "Broachcos" is so/so, but might be good enough if coupled with a symbol of a roach in the classic Broncos horse pose. Otherwise better fitting prof team names parodied as bugs.
Or, the school team (Rams) and the rival school (Buffaloes) would also be good names to parody.
