SYDNEY: Wildlife officers have busted an illegal cockroach-breeding operation in rural Australia, seizing a skin-crawling haul worth more than $100,000 on the black market for exotic bugs.

More than 100,000 contraband cockroaches were found in a raid on a commercial breeder in the town of Bathurst, west of Sydney, Australia’s environment department said on Friday.

They found Madagascar “hissing” cockroaches, a bulky insect named for its noisy defence mechanism, and dubia cockroaches, an invasive critter bred as a snack for pet lizards.

Photos showed that one of the seized Madagascar cockroaches was almost big enough to completely cover the palm of an adult hand.

“We take our job protecting Australia’s unique biodiversity and breaches of national environment law very seriously,” an environment department spokesman said.

“We’re seeing illegal breeding and trading of exotic cockroaches and we’re putting pet businesses and pet owners on notice.”

The department said the illicit insects had an estimated value of US$140,000 (Aus$200,000).

Officials now have the unenviable task of euthanising the creepy-crawlies, an insect so hardy it spawned an urban legend they could survive a nuclear blast.