Anyone ever attmepted to interbreed house crickets with field crickets?

bugmankeith

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Now is the time when Field crickets are mature, so I decided to put a male field cricket in with a bunch of virgin female house crickets, and then a male house cricket with 2 virgin female field crickets, whom I caught as last instar before molting to adult. I lined the 2 tanks with soil, food, and paper towel rolls.

The male field cricket was highly aggressive to the house females, trying to bite their legs off, so I let him and the females go outside. However, the male house cricket was having some luck with the field females. At first they tried to kick him away, but within a few hours I witnessed him mate with a female and saw the sperm transfer! I waited to make sure it was not aborted, and it was not.

I then released the non mated field female, and house male, and kept the mated field female for a week since at first she would not lay her eggs. Finally she layed the eggs, and I let her go after a while back outside.

I waited a few weeks but nothing came of the eggs, but my soil had dried out a bit so mabye it was my error?
 

bugmankeith

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Those field crickets fly very well too, which is surprising because they are so bulky.
 

ZergFront

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I've never tried that, but that's because I've had only 2 WC field crickets to my 2000+ purchased "domestic" crickets and the thought never occurred.

I kept a little field cricket in an ornate, wooden box with screen I called my lucky cricket. He only lived 4 days.. guess I didn't give HIM any luck.
 

Obelisk

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By field cricket, do you mean the large black ones? I ask because I've read that those are much more willing to bite than the brown crickets are. That would make it a pain to collect them by hand when it's feeding time.
 

bugmankeith

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Yeah the ones that are black and bite you, yup. Hey, some domestic male crickets have bitten me, they can hurt too!

I was just curious about interbreeding because I assume the result will be a meatier cricket that will be more disease resistant, which would be helpful.
 

Obelisk

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I've actually never been bitten by the brown ones, though maybe it's because I'm a little more careful when grabbing them than most keepers are.

In any case, it sounds like a great experiment. The field cricks are the species that they use for can-o-crickets (which I used to feed to my pacman frogs). They're definitely meatier. As far as the biting thing, I guess one could use forceps instead.
 

Scorpendra

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They're not in the same genus, so I'd actually be pretty surprised if it worked.
 

Crysta

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to not confuse babies? i dunno.
But i would have kept the male cricket and that female cricket in the enclosure...so you can have hundreds! lol

edit
this reminds me
I let a bunch of petstore crickets outside once (when I had my bearded dragon) then a few months later I started seeing lightish/darkish crickets jumping around.

And now a few years later, the whole population of field crickets have disapeared in my area...my neibores, and niebore niebores and down by the river...
i dont think it was because I released those guys, but maybe.
I only found 1 young field cricket (normal black colored) in the past 4 years.
and that was yesterday.
 

bugmankeith

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But highly unlikely is NOT impossible, so you never know until you actually try.
 

Spider-Spazz

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when at petsmart, if i ever get too many crickets i let the leftover ones go in my back yard. petsmart has the little yellowish ones, in my backyard are black ones that i HATE! they sneak into my house and chirp at night!
i've never captive bred them, but i've been seeing a lot of mixed breed crickets under pieces of wood and things. they're blackish yellowish in color, pretty interesting.
 

Toirtis

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But highly unlikely is NOT impossible, so you never know until you actually try.
True, but cross-genera hybrids are extremely rare....impossible about 99.99% of the time. In fact, I cannot think of any involving insects.
 

Travis K

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Am I the only one that really gets twisted up about you guys letting domestic/farm raise crickets go in you local ecosystems?:confused:
 

Crysta

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nooo your not, it was a horrible idea ill never do again! :( my dont know better youth escapes.. .hehe
 

Moltar

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You know, they did a similar thing with honeybees once. As I recall the hybridizing of African honeybees and European honeybees worked out really well... for the bees. :eek:




A. Probably won't succeed (as mentioned before, different genus)
B. Would likely produce an inferior feeder anyway (if it did succeed)
C. DON'T let them get back into the wild (if you do succeed that is, which you probably won't)
 

zonbonzovi

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You know, they did a similar thing with honeybees once. As I recall the hybridizing of African honeybees and European honeybees worked out really well... for the bees. :eek:
Same genus;)
 
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