Cricket Beetle Game
Magin Sriubas
About 30 years ago, I was riding my mountain bike in the desert north of Reno when I saw a large, shiny insect climbing up one of the sage bushes. I stopped, emptied the little container I kept full of bike tools into my pockets and collected it. By that time, I'd almost given up collecting, but this was a remarkable specimen. Its large back legs indicated it was a member of the order orthoptera, which contains grasshoppers, crickets, katydids and their kin. The large saber-shaped ovipositor (egg laying structure) indicated it was a female.
I hadn't seen another specimen until 20 years later, riding across Nevada and Utah when an outbreak was under way. In places, hundreds of them got crushed making patches on the road slippery. I think once one got crushed, it attracted its relatives who, in turn, got crushed on the road for their cannibalistic tendencies.
Yesterday I carefully removed the old specimen from the last display frame I have left to photograph her. One photo and the pin I had her on slipped from my tweezers. She ended up in dozens of tiny pieces, so I decided to immortalize her on the web.
The sound of the rain had stopped and I was all ready to go out and capture a photo of the spider that eluded me the night before. I got all loaded up with cameras and gear, dressed for the cold, went to the back door, turned on the light and there was a world of white. Even the dogs didn't want to go out. So, rather than freeze looking for a critter who was probably hiding from the cold under the shingles of my pump house, I decided to stay in and work on one of those challenging focus-stacked images.
Darkling beetles are one of the larger beetles in our area. Tanks of the bug world, they are armored with a shell hard enough to resist being crushed. When threatened, they assume a butt-in-the-air posture and emit a foul smelling liquid. Even chickens seem to leave them alone. Other than that, they're pretty harmless, subsisting largely on decaying vegetable matter and manure. The specimen I have was collected in Eastern Oregon on a farm. There were a great many of them bumbling along every evening last summer.
If, like me, you dislike mosquitoes, I suggest emptying out any flower saucers or other places standing water can collect. Characteristically, as adults, they don't travel far from where they emerged so reducing the numbers of their larvae can reduce the numbers locally. Laying their eggs on stagnate water allows the larvae to develop unmolested by larger predators like fish. If your container is too large or heavy to move easily, there are several dunks and granules you can add to the water to render it unlivable for them. Many are based on the bacterial toxin BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), a natural soil bacteria.
The family Scarabaeidae includes over 30,000 species of beetle worldwide. This family includes scarabs, dung beetles, rhinoceros beetles, stag beetles, Hercules beetles, Goliath beetles and june bugs. Scarabaeidae species have diverse relationships with humans. Some are agricultural pests of a devastating nature, doing millions of dollars in damage. Others are more useful, and some carrion-eating scarabs are among the many insect species used in forensic entomology and taxidermy to clean corpses. The most famous beetle-human relationship is that of Scarabaeus sacer, the sacred beetle of Khepri, an Egyptian solar deity and aspect of Ra.
Rhinoceros beetles show an extreme sexual dimorphism,meaning that the males and females of the species are physically distinct. The female beetles are small and lack horns. The males grow much larger, and have a large, forked horn they use during mating season. The purpose of this horn is to lift another male off the ground and throw them into the air, at which point they will fall to the ground, far out of the way, and the winning male can proceed to mate with the female. At some point in history, an enterprising ancient entomologist realized that these beetles could be manipulated to fight on command. Two male beetles are placed on a log, and a small noisemaker is used to duplicate the mating call of a female. In response to this sound, the two males will begin fighting in hopes of securing access to the hypothetical female.
In addition to the five virtues, there are three races, four body colors, 72 different personalities, and countless variations on jaws, necks, antennae and other body parts to consider. These attributes can be judged and quantified by examining a cricket, and improved by training them. While unintentional, this ends up resembling the common statistics found in all role playing games, including Pokemon. Perhaps a similar list of Pokemon virtues would look like this:
While not the sport it once was, vast cricket markets still exist today. Crickets born in the wild are generally considered better fighters than those born in captivity, and so every autumn thousands of people go out into the wilds collecting them. The best cricket trainers must travel around the Chinese countryside to properly obtain and judge different crickets. As demand for crickets increases, the species may even go extinct in some communities, causing the markets and festivals to move until the species has recovered. There are two major cricket tournaments, the National Cricket Fighting Championship in Beijing and the Yu Sheng Cup in Luhua, but throughout the year there are constant smaller bouts, often in shady dives and gambling dens.
Males may call at night or during the day. It is a loud, quickly repeating series of staccato rasps. Calling males often position themselves between two leaves, or on a leaf that curls around them, creating chamber to amplify and project their sound.
Similar species: This is the only member of genus Phyllopalpus, but there are three other genera in the subfamily of winged bush crickets, also called trigs (subfamily Trigonidiinae). In North America north of Mexico, these include 4 species of green trigs (Cyrtoxipha), about 8 species of brown trigs (Anaxipha), and 1 species, Hebard's trig, in genus Falcicula. All of these relatives are either pale green or tan; none have the bold red and black coloration of the handsome trig.
Typically occurs near streams, in wetlands, and other low, wet areas. Lives in bushes and other vegetation, about four feet off the ground. When it senses danger, it quickly runs to the undersides of leaves. On cool, sunny mornings late in the season, you may see them sunning themselves on the top sides of leaves.
Adults become mature in the middle of summer; listen for the males' singing in July and August. Females deposit eggs in the trunks of trees, using the curved, swordlike ovipositor at the tip of the abdomen. There is only one brood per year.
Humans through the ages, and across cultures, have appreciated the sounds of singing insects. Japanese haiku masters, lovers of nature, wrote poems about crickets just as they did about flowers, mushrooms, and the beauties of rain and moonlight. In 1961, Canadian songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen deftly summarized the sultry, still quality of a summer day with his own haiku, which might as well have been about the handsome trig: "Silence / and a deeper silence / when the crickets / hesitate."
Although it's not completely clear if handsome trigs are distasteful to predators themselves, they apparently employ their black-and-red coloration as a form of protection against possible predators. There are plenty of bad-tasting, toxic, or stinging insects that have similar colors: wasps, moths, beetles, and more. This beetle-like cricket may be a mimic of bombardier beetles, which spew foul chemicals for defense. The interrelationships are complex, with some species being genuinely bad news for predators, and others being harmless mimics taking advantage of the warning coloration.
Jerusalem crickets are insects but are not in the same family as true crickets, Grylloidea, despite their name. However, they are related and fall under the same order of insects, Orthoptera.
The name potato bug is confusing because there are several other potato-loving bugs that have also been given the nickname potato bug. So don't confuse the Jerusalem cricket with the Colorado potato beetle, pillbugs, or sowbugs.
Jerusalem crickets are not from Jerusalem or related to the city in any way. They get their name because they often startle people due to their appearance. At the time of their discovery, people sometimes used "Jerusalem!" as a polite euphemism for more severe expletives if they were suddenly started.
Jerusalem crickets are identifiable by their six legs, two small eyes, and unique body shape. As they are in the same family as the camel cricket, they have a similarly shaped body with a humpback. Their backs have yellow and black stripes. Compared to other cricket species, they have short rear legs. These legs have spines on the backs.
Their heads are large for their size, and they have strong jaws. They typically use these powerful mandibles to cut up their food, but they can also bite if frightened or handled by humans. Their jaws are so strong that they can easily cut through plastic and fabric.
Jerusalem crickets do not have wings and can not fly. They are slow walkers and don't pose much of a threat to humans, as long as you keep your fingers away from their mouths. If you pick one up, they are more likely to play dead at first and only bite if you handle them roughly or feel threatened.
Jerusalem crickets like sandy environments and also prefer to live under natural cover like rocks, logs, or dead plant matter. They are also commonly found in home spaces such as garages. Jerusalem cricket often leave tracks on sandy or gravel paths because when they walk, they drag their abdomen along the ground, pressing down the dirt in trenches. The resulting friction can sometimes create a faint scratching sound.
Besides this sound of their abdomen on the ground, these bugs do not chirp like true crickets. However, if they are agitated, they can rub their rear legs together and make a hissing sound that is reminiscent of sandpaper.
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