They are also used to feed carnivorous pets and zoo animals. They are used as human food in Southeast Asia, where they are sold deep-fried in markets as snacks.
Crickets are efficient at converting their food into body mass, making them a candidate for food production. They are kept as pets in countries from China to Europe, sometimes for cricket fighting. Crickets are celebrated in poems by William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Du Fu. The insect is central to Charles Dickens's 1845 The Cricket on the Hearth and George Selden's 1960 The Cricket in Times Square. The Talking Cricket features in Carlo Collodi's 1883 children's book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, and in films based on the book. The singing species have good hearing, via the tympana on the tibiae of the front legs.Ĭrickets often appear as characters in literature. Crickets are mainly nocturnal, and are best known for the loud, persistent, chirping song of males trying to attract females, although some species are mute. They occur in varied habitats from grassland, bushes, and forests to marshes, beaches, and caves. The largest members of the family are the bull crickets, Brachytrupes, which are up to 5 cm (2 in) long.Ĭrickets are distributed all around the world except at latitudes 55° or higher, with the greatest diversity being in the tropics. The hind wings are membranous and folded when not in use for flight many species, however, are flightless.
The front wings are adapted as tough, leathery elytra, and some crickets chirp by rubbing parts of these together. Diagnostic features include legs with 3-segmented tarsi as with many Orthoptera, the hind legs have enlarged femora, providing power for jumping. The abdomen ends in a pair of long cerci females have a long, cylindrical ovipositor. Behind the head is a smooth, robust pronotum. They have mainly cylindrically-shaped bodies, round heads, and long antennae. The word has been used in combination to describe more distantly related taxa in the suborder Ensifera, such as king crickets and mole crickets. Gryllidae), but contemporary authorities including Otte now place them in the superfamily Grylloidea. In older literature, such as Imms, "crickets" were placed at the family level ( i.e. Paragryllidae Desutter-Grandcolas, 1987Ĭrickets are Orthopteran insects which are related to bush crickets, and, more distantly, to grasshoppers.
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