Name a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach for Your Valentine
Give your Valentine a unique gift by naming a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach after them with the Bronx Zoo’s Name-a-Roach Program!
Gift a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach for your Valentine with the Name-a-Roach Program
A Valentine to Remember… Forever! Name-a-Roach: Name a Bronx Zoo Madagascar Hissing Cockroach for your Valentine Upgrade and include a gift in addition to the namesake roach:
Roach beanie cap, roach mug, and roach pin (back by popular demand) Seal it with a ‘hiss’ at www.bronxzoo.com/roach
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and the Bronx Zoo is once again offering the only gift that will be around longer than anyone – the original Name-a-Roach is back.
The Name-a-Roach offering is a light-hearted way to make sure your loved one knows your feelings will last a lifetime.
The Bronx Zoo is offering the opportunity to symbolically name its 50,000-plus giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches for Valentine’s Day 2019. The tongue-in-cheek 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 $15 donation, your loved one (or unloved one) will receive the printed certificate to cherish for years to come, featuring the name 
chosen for your Valentine’s Day roach. To make an extra impression, send “the works” for a $75 donation which includes a printed certificate as well as the other roach gifts including a warm beanie cap, a mug, and crazy roach pin. Various combinations of the roachy merchandise are also available for $55. All orders can be placed at www.BronxZoo.com/Roach.
“The Bronx Zoo’s Name-A-Roach promotion is a light-hearted, fun way to reach out to someone on Valentine’s Day to let them know that you are thinking about them,” said John F. Calvelli, WCS Executive Vice President of Public Affairs. “Nothing lasts longer than a roach, so it could be sent as a symbolic gesture about how long your love will last or exactly the opposite. Some might say that love is like a roach – elusive, resilient, and sometimes very scary.”
The original Name-a-Roach launched in 2011, and thousands of hopeless romantics from around the world have named the Bronx Zoo’s Madagascar hissing cockroaches 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 and the Bronx Zoo 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.
About the Bronx Zoo
The Bronx Zoo, located on 265 acres of hardwood forest in Bronx, NY, opened on Nov. 8, 1899. It is world-renowned for its leadership in the areas of animal welfare, husbandry, veterinarian care, education, science, and conservation. The zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and is the flagship park of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) which manages the world’s largest network of urban wildlife parks including the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo, Queens Zoo, and New York Aquarium. Our curators and animal care staff work to save, propagate, and sustain populations of threatened and endangered species. We have educated and inspired more than 400 million visitors at our zoos and aquarium since our opening and host approximately 4 million guests at our parks each year – including about a half-million students annually. The Bronx Zoo is the largest youth employer in the borough of the Bronx, providing opportunity and helping to transform lives in one of the most under-served communities in the nation. The Bronx Zoo is the subject of THE ZOO, a docu-series aired worldwide on Animal Planet. For more information, visit www.BronxZoo.com. Members of the media should contact mpulsinelli@wcs.org (718-220-5182) or mdixon@wcs.org.
About WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society)
MISSION: WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. To achieve our mission, WCS, based at the Bronx Zoo, harnesses the power of its Global Conservation Program in nearly 60 nations and in all the world’s oceans and its five wildlife parks in New York City, visited by 4 million people annually. WCS combines its expertise in the field, zoos, and aquarium to achieve its conservation mission. Visit: newsroom.wcs.org Follow: @WCSNewsroom.
