TO MATCH FEATURE AUSTRALIA-COCKROACHES, 2003-05-19 (photo)

Hayley Smithers holds the world's biggest coackroach, an Australian Burrowing Cockroach, at on display at Sydney's zoo May 19, 2003. Workers in Australia's pet industry say the demand for insects as pets has risen in the past five years beacuse of cramped living, and this includes the number of people befriending coackroaches, with the biggest of the species native to Australia. Huge and shiny with spikey legs, they're clean, not stinky at all and very low maintenance and can be kept in a medium-sized tank with four to five inches of sandy soil at room temperature. TO MATCH FEATURE AUSTRALIA-COCKROACHES REUTERS/David Gray DG/FA