Cool things you didn't know - 4 - The Jerusalem cricket

Jerusalem (sand) cricket I photographed in 2008 with my Nikon D70 and macro equipment.

Neither from Jerusalem nor a cricket, this is a strange insect.  It turns out that there may be anywhere from 20 - 100 species of this unusual nocturnal forager.  Scientists aren't sure about the number because of the relatively small area each population lives in.  Genetic variation may show a high degree of overlap between groups, making species identification somewhat challenging.

Being wingless and fossorial, they don't travel far from their burrows, only going out when it is dark to feed.  Although they are somewhat docile, they have a strong bite and can inflict an injury on anyone mishandling one.  They use that bite to capture other insects or to eat plant matter, or scavenge.  

They dig their own burrows.  Their strong legs, strong jaws, and bulbous head all allow earthen material to be excavated and then moved to create a hollow.  These relatives of camel crickets depend on their underground dwellings to avoid hot days, drying out, and protection from predators.  They have incomplete metamorphosis, which means that the young look very much like the adults, only smaller.  With each successive moult, the juveniles continue to grow until they reach maturity, when they are ready to breed.

Another interesting fact about Jerusalem crickets is that they are deaf and have no means of "singing" the way regular crickets and grasshoppers do.  Instead, they drum their rather large abdomens along the ground to produce a low frequency vibration, something that can be "heard" by others of the same species as vibrations of the earth.  If you are close enough (within 15 m), you can hear them too.  There is an excellent video on them here.

I have only ever caught/photographed the one individual.  They tend to live in arid places in the US southwest and Mexico.  As is my habit, I was pulling up rocks one day and happened upon this male (two cerci with no ovipositor).  I got a few photos of him before releasing him back to his burrow.  Like I said, this is a strange insect.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

Now, that's one strange insect.  

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