Why is it the Gray cricket is produced commercially but not the Black species? I noticed this year in my area the population has exploded. You can drive down the road past the corn fields with your radio on in the mid afternoon and hear them.

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Mike
"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you." - Mother Teresa

Haha, there are many MANY species of cricket out there The typical black one most people think of is the field cricket, which is the name of any species under the genus Gryllus. They're native to North America. The ones you see in the pet trade are European house crickets (Acheta domestrica). Although I'm not sure what triggered the use of this species, once it's use started, there was really no point to mass breed any other species. I do know one advantage that house crickets have over field crickets though. Field cricket males have HUGE heads, with rather large mandibles. They're more of a threat to any lizard than the house crickets would be.

Here's a male Gryllus sp.
http://ltc.smm.org/buzz/media/images...pi.preview.jpg

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"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

I can definitely see the advantage of the European cricket. That is a huge head.

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Mike
"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you." - Mother Teresa

Wow, that is cool looking! I have never seen a cricket like that. I think I want one as a pet.

You don't have field crickets in FL? What do your crickets look like?

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"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield

The black crickets are not only more capable of biting they have a much harder exoskeleton and are harder to digest and thus a greater risk of impaction.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

Well it would be a short lived pet anyways....

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Warmest Regards from Lyn

We use the blacks for fishing where I am from. They make great bait. Also I have noticed that the blacks seem to make more noise, could that be one of the reasons why they used the european?

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~Chris

It is better I think to reach for the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them, at least he who reaches will get a good view, a good stretch and perhaps even a low hanging apple for the effort.
-R.A. Salvatore

I always fed my lizards on the blacks, the Bearded Dragons seem to prefer them..they do bite though and have to keep ontop of the ones that dont get eaten,

I became the fastest cricket catcher in the north lol having to catch all the uneaten ones in the evenings with my tweezers, you could see them attacking the tweezers when I caught them, vicious little buggers

I have always used the European crickets, Though I do see a lot of black ones in my backyard