House Cricket

• Only the male sings, rubbing a scraper on one wing against a file on the other; the rate of the song speeds up with temperature so regularly that it can be used to estimate it.
• Its ears are not on its head but on its front legs, in the form of two tympanic membranes just below the knee.
• It is one of the four insect species authorised by the European Union as human food, and is farmed industrially for flours and protein bars.
• It is one of the edible insects authorised in the European Union: the Commission approved its sale frozen, dried and as a powder in 2022, and partially defatted in January 2023.
• Its protein has an in vitro digestibility of 79 to 93%, comparable to that of conventional animal sources.
• Intensive rearing has an Achilles heel: cricket densovirus (AdDNV), which has wiped out entire farms in North America and Europe.
• It can trigger cross-reactions in people allergic to crustaceans and dust mites, because of tropomyosin.
• It is traditionally eaten in South-East Asia, above all in Thailand.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Heated buildings, refuse tips and human-modified ground

Sexual maturity

The female can mate two days after reaching adulthood and begins to lay around the ninth day; the nymphs go through between 6 and 12 instars depending on the source

Gestation / incubation

The eggs hatch in 1-2 weeks (about 13 days at 30 °C); development from egg to adult takes 40 to 45 days in optimal conditions and up to 200 days at 18 °C

Litter / clutch size

Clutches of 50 to 100 eggs every 2 or 3 days; a mated female can lay close to 3,000 eggs over about 70 days of adult life

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheta_domesticus; Clifford 1990 via guias de cria de grillo domestico; Nature Scientific Reports (mas de 1.500 huevos); ScienceDirect (Hughes 1989); Science Advances, How colonial animals evolve; Wikipedia, Zooid; Clifford 1977 y FAO 2014 via guias de cria de grillo; ficha de identificacion; Ficha de identificacion de Acheta domesticus; Ficha de especie de Acheta domesticus; Clifford 1990 y Nix & Bass 1973 via guias de cria; ficha de especie