CRICKETS YOU CAN CALL YOUR OWN
by Paul Bara
from the July/August 1979 issue of Tarantula Times
The tarantula is perhaps the most unfinicky animal a person could own. You can feed it virtually nothing but crickets for a year and, except during the pre-moult fast and other periods of low metabolic activity, he will happily devour each one without complaint.
Though you might occasionally want to offer your pet a baby mouse or some other live morsel, you will otherwise find the cricket to be an excellent staple. If you live in a rural or suburban area, you are probably blessed with an abundant supply of the little critters during the warm months. However, once winter arrives you will have to depend on your local pet shop for your cricket supply; and as city dwellers know, this source is unreliable at best. For this reason, and because pet stores commonly charge a minimum of 10 cents per cricket, it makes good sense to raise your own. Here’s how to do that.
As a tarantula owner, you probably have a separate container or tank where you keep a small amount of crickets from which you dispense one or two at a time, depending on your pet’s eating habits. The first step in breeding these insects is to select one male and one female from the lot and place them in a third container. This facility should of course be ventilated, covered at the bottom with a layer of sand and contain some sort of dark cave-like hiding place. Besides supplying the crickets with food and water, you should also maintain a small dish of moist sand where the female can deposit her eggs.
The reason for selecting only one cricket of each sex is to prevent rivalry, particularly among the males. If you had more than one male on the job, they would spend most of their time fighting over the female.
Mature male and female crickets are quite easy to distinguish. The most obvious distinction is the long dark stick which protrudes from just above the anus of the female. This she uses to poke holes into the sand where she then deposits her eggs. The male, on the other hand, bears no such protuberance but has an extra long set of wings. These are aerodynamically useless, but the shorter pair near his head he manipulates to create his characteristic chirping sound. The female is totally mute.
The sexual activity of these creatures is fascinating to watch. It is a non-coital endeavor where the two engage in a bestial ritual, both working very hard for a common purpose, yet always remaining detached and independent. The female is like a walking syringe, hypodermically pumping her eggs into the moist sand with incredible vigor. Her task is obviously quite tiresome and perhaps even painful, yet she continues it hour after hour, day after day. Meanwhile, the male does his part by flexing his wings to produce a constant whispery buzz; not the usual intermittent chirp, but a continuous drone. While his body is rapidly agitating, he dances around his mate with a bizarre strutting motion. This may be a means of warding off intruders or perhaps even a form of sexual stimulation. Regardless of its purpose, it’s a splendid choreographic display of instinctive insect behavior, and a pleasure to witness. As the female cricket moves along the sand creating a trail of tiny ditches, the male parades behind her dabbing his semen over the area, thus fertilizing the eggs.
If you keep your crickets in a warm, dark place and keep that dish of sand moist, you should see results within a few weeks. You may not notice the newly hatched insects at first, but as they begin to grow you will be able to discern tiny specks moving along the sand. Inspect them with a magnifying glass and you’ll recognize them as baby crickets. Apparently these insects don’t go through larval or pupal stages, but emerge instead as true replicas of their parents, complete with eyes, mouth, legs and antennae. Only the wings are missing.
As many as one hundred tiny crickets may emerge, and to save as many as possible, steps should be taken to sustain them. Since most insects have a tendency to occasionally devour their young, it is a good idea to remove the adults soon after the hatching takes place. Another way to maximize their rate of survival is to acquire yet another container and divide the group in half; this will thin out the population somewhat. But the most important action you can take is to remove any dishful of standing water and replace it with a soaked sponge. The newly born crickets are feather-light and hyper buoyant so their bodies stick to water as flies stick to fly-tape. By using the wet-sponge method you will prevent many from drowning and increase their mortality rate by perhaps as much as 50%.
Young crickets have voracious appetites and their capacity for consumption is quite pronounced. Offer them a leaf of lettuce and you can watch it disappear in a matter of minutes. But in order for them to grow they must experience a series of moultings whereby they anchor their legs and emerge from their dark exoskeletons looking tender and ghostly white. Very soon after they discorporate, their old skins are devoured so there is never any lingering debris.
Be sure to remember to keep your crickets warm and well fed and you’ll have no problem raising them to adulthood. Be patient though, because it will be about three months before they are large enough to put on your spider’s menu.
