Tachycines asynamorus is an introduced species of cricket. It originally was distributed on plant shipments, and is sometimes called the greenhouse stone cricket. Tachycines asynamorus is commonly known as the camel cricket because of its humped back. (There are several other kinds of crickets that are also known as camel crickets, though.)

The camel cricket is silent and wingless. At first glance it resembles a spider, and has disgustingly long antenne. It looks creepy and likes dark, spooky places. Camel crickets are nocturnal. When disturbed, they are capable of amazing (and seemingly random) leaps. "My" crickets live in an outdoor closet, and they love to perch on the back wall. You can almost always find one there when you turn on the light.

Like most crickets, they'll eat just about anything, but their favorite foods seem to be Vitaflies and oatmeal. Camel crickets also love to eat camel cricket eggs. I've concluded that the only way that a new generation of young hatches is by the older generation dying off (my observations support this. I removed most of the camel crickets from the outdoor colony. During the time that I had these adult crickets, about two months, I observed plenty of egg laying but no babies. During this time, young crickets began to appear at the site of the old colony).

They are rarely kept in captivity. I kept a colony of about a dozen adults from late May 1999 to August 1st 1999. I released them because of a heat wave - a glass aquarium is no place to be when the outdoor temperature is over a hundred degrees, and I couldn't bring them inside for various reasons, various reasons being named "Mom."

Since there's not much information about them on the web (or anywhere), I decided to share some of my reaserch, and pictures of these incredible bugs. All are (c) Cathy Covington 1999; please email me before reproducing them anywhere.

LINKS

Hop on over to some other neat sites with camel cricket information.

Back to Cathy's Homepage