Crickets as pets | Hacker News Reader

Crickets as pets

en.wikipedia.org

Born and raised in Northern China (2hrs drive from Beijing), my parents bought me crickets & taught me how to catch grasshoppers when I was in early school age. They have short lifespans, so they are quite affordable and low-maintenance pets for families who aren't yet sure about (or can't yet afford to) keep pets that lives for years (cats, dogs, ...). Plus, they teach young children lessons on caring, feeding, life and death, just as well as the latter. I like it.

I had a chinese friend who was apparently really into fighting them, which seems a bit of a fringe sport…

The Japanese are also into fighting insects, although mostly with beetles. Pokemon is more understandable with this in mind as the idea of people collecting creatures to fight with other people's creatures is an extension of this.

Beetles? Hmm I never heard about that. Spiders, yes.. And they are huge :)

Beetles fighting things are all over youtube

Let's have a talk about the tweetle beetles!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5wvurTU5DI&t=276s

I grew up in the South Eastern US, and bug and lizard cages were common educational toys.

I used to catch grasshoppers, lizards, fireflies, and "June bugs" (Popillia japonica).

One summer, there was a particularly bad outbreak of June bugs and if you shook a Japanese maple tree, the entire tree would empty of thousands of them in a dense cloud.

Childhood summers were fun.

I'm pretty convinced that June bugs are the dumbest insects on the planet.

They are so clumsy! They slowly fly and collide into everything.

There are so many "smart" insects with highly evolved predator avoidance. These are not those insects.

My partner had a jumping spider as a pet for some time in a terrarium. It was really interesting because he would jump out onto my partners arms when we opened his terrarium and then climb around and then go back after doing some wandering. Pet beetles are also pretty common (and something that I really want tbh). There are a lot of animals that you wouldn't think can be pets, but honestly, if you're helping a critter survive you'll create some attachment to them and maybe they will too. A lot of pet insects can live for 5-7 years too if done right.

They’re insanely intelligent for something so small.

The clothing patterns of the Japanese cricket vendors in the article are awesome [1]. By a "Torii Kiyohiro" [1] who seemed to have a thing for drawing/carving intricate clothing [2][3].

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torii_Kiyohiro_-_Thr...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torii_Kiyohiro

3. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?artist=Torii...

4. https://www.artic.edu/collection?artist_ids=Torii%20Kiyohiro

Fits in pocket, chirps for attention, low lifespan...

It's an analog Tamagotchi.

As a child, I lived in Firenze (Florence, Italy) and had a pet cricket. All the kids had them, in little bamboo cages, for the Festival of the Cricket:

https://www.italymagazine.com/forums/do-see/6010-festival-cr...

I tried to take good care if it, but it died after a couple of months. I probably didn't know what to feed it (but then again I was only 5 years old).

Crickets only live for a couple months so it could of just died of old age.

I haven't looked into whether this happens in other countries, but in Turkey, when kids ask for a cat or a dog, parents will often buy them a baby chick from a local market instead. Sadly, within a week or so, once the child loses interest, the chick is often gotten rid of somehow by the parents.

Goldfish are what stereotypically served this purpose in the UK and Ireland, though this seems to have got out of fashion as pet shops no longer sell goldfish to be kept in tiny bowls.

Sometime in California of the 1990s, goldfish were superseded by Bettas or "Siamese Fighting Fish". You could find them lounging boredly in those same tiny goldfish bowls, even though they were probably better served with a filter, pump, furniture, and tropical water temperatures.

If you brought together the bowls of two male Bettas, each would viciously attack the glass to get at the other fish. I suppose there were actually people who set up cockfight-like contests, and bet on which fish would survive the fights.

I think I had one of these at some point. They are ornamental, in bright colors and long, flowing fins all over the place. They probably don't live long, no matter what.

Bettas were already very popular by the mid-80s. I was born in '76, grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and remember getting my first around 2nd grade, and continued to own a single or a pair until middle school. I recall many other kids did as well - to the point where it felt like a fad of that era, like Chinese jumprope, Rubik's Magic, and Aerobees. Walk into any fish store in the valley back then and there would be a bunch of betta bowls at the front, sold as a package with some food for like $5.

I heard they do it in Spain, too. Around Easter in particular. Sometimes the chicks are even painted.

Selling painted chicks is prohibited in the EU since several decades ago.

so much cruelty to animals is it really surprising people do the same/worse to each other in more advanced ways?

wars lead to millions of orphans, widows, and utter loss.

Apparently cricket fights are also a thing. I find this part intresting (from the cricket fight wikipedia article:

> Studies done indicate that the sense of "flying" encourages a cricket's fighting spirit. In one such study, a losing cricket put back into the ring will only go back to fight one out of ten times. If crickets are shaken and thrown in the air repeatedly, they will fight again six out of ten times.

Quite likely because they are very angry about being shaken and thrown. As you would be too, I imagine.

Stick insects are a common “starter pet” for infants school (kindergarten) kids in England

What's brown and sticky? A stick insect.

I recently went to this insectarium and saw a ton of stick and leaf insects, so cool how they evolved to mimic their environment to such a degree.

There's a good Judge Dee novel that incorporates pet crickets as a central plot ploy.

Which one?

Tried to keep crickets as food for a bearded dragon. Never had any luck. I'd end up going outside to catch some or buy them from a pet store or bait shop.

Didn’t most people keep stick insects (which aren’t quite crickets, but similar) as pets when they were kids?

I thought that was a near universal experience for nerdy academic families, along with hatching frog spawn and having a chemistry set and causing minor explosions in the garage.

Those fun chemistry sets are banned now.

In central Spain, around the eighties, my grandpa has a handmade cricket cage (wood frame with metal wire bars) with a cricket in. It was feed with lettuce I recall for sure, but I was small so I don't know if there was any variation in it.

More animals should be kept as pets :)

Should they, though? What gives us the right to own another animal and to entrap it in captivity? I have never understood this attitude.

If you genuinely love something, set it free. Or better yet, don't keep it captive in the first place. Live in harmony with the wildlife around you, don't force them to live with you.

I intended that to imply "with care and respect", not trapping in cages.

I meant, more people should explore the joys of companionship with a broader variety of species, if that makes sense.

I feel sad about keeping animals in small confines, away from their natural habitat, but on the other hand, I have come to the subjective conclusion that rights are also subjective.

Pets generally enjoy a much nicer life than living in the wild.

> Chinese breeders of the 21st century strive to extend the fighting season to the whole year. They advertise farm-bred "designer bugs" as super-fighters and agree that their technology is "completely counter to the natural process". However, they refuse to use hormones or the practice of arming crickets with steel implants.

Um, what?

Just in case you didn’t read the entire article (it is long) this is a quote from the industrial farming section.

Right? What's wrong with steel implants?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com