Crickets You Probably Haven't Seen in your Backyard

The Discovery Channel had a great new show on the other night about the Kalahari Desert. One of the critters they featured was the amazing Armored Cricket. A real ewww factor. Kind of like something out of a science fiction movie. These crickets live in the grasses of the Kalahari desert. They eat many different foods, especially the hatchlings in the nests of the Red Billed Quela. It is believed they find the nests through auditory signals. The bird nests are suspended from tree limbs and the crickets simply climb the trees to feed. The parent birds are able to fend them off if they are around however. There are many predators of the crickets, but if they are attacked, they have a mechanism for defense that enables them to spray a toxic chemical on their attackers. They also are good ground fighters defending themselves by biting their opponents.

Reproduction of these insects is very interesting (from Wikipedia):

"Acanthoplus discoidalis have a relatively long courtship period, it starts at sunset and is usually completed by sunrise. Males stridulate which attracts females to their location. Males produce a large sperm pouch and an associated spermatophylax (a body of food given to the female as a nuptial gift) - together termed the spermatophore. They therefore cannot mate again for some time as they have to wait until a new spermatophore has grown. Females mate once before laying eggs, and then mate and lay eggs in a random order. This means that it is advantageous for males to mate with virgins over non-virgins as a higher proportion of the offspring will be their own. Males are able to discriminate between virgins and non-virgins and successfully complete more matings with virgins and they transfer their spermatophore more quickly when mating with virgins. Virgins are lighter than non-virgins allowing males to distinguish between virgins and non-virgins by determining the mass of the female when they copulate."

Hmmm, Maybe this sounds more like a science fiction movie based on somebody's fantasy …………