No one quite knows how they came to America, though they were probably stowaways who survived and thrived in the land of the free because of their ability to live almost anywhere and eat anything, including each other.
So-called cannibal crickets from Asia are now living in great numbers all over the eastern United States, according to a new paper by etymologists at North Carolina State University.
Diestrammena asynamora, a species of camel cricket known to inhabit Japan and the Sichuan province of China, was thought to be rare in America outside of green houses.
But thanks to a nationwide survey of over seven thousand households, as well as a more detailed study using insect traps in back gardens in North Carolina, it now appears that the Asian camel crickets are more common than native species in back gardens and homes east of the Mississippi River.
“There could be as many as seven hundred million camel crickets in and around homes across the eastern United States alone,” the scientists say.
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They were “the stuff of nightmares,” according to a press release from the university, mainly due to their appearance, for they do not dine on people.
“They are a nightmare for a squeamish housewife,” said Dr Mary Jane Epps.
“I think they are kind of cute, personally. But I’m an etymologist for a reason.”
She said the first of these crickets to land in America probably came attached to pot plants. “Or they were stowaways in ships,” she said. “These guys are extremely omnivorous. They are not very picky eaters. They can find something to munch on during a long trans-oceanic journey.”
She said the cannibalism was “mainly of dead crickets,” though she added: “I wouldn’t put it past a big individual to munch on a little one. It’s not uncommon in a lot of camel cricket species.”
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She said one particular camel cricket was indigenous to caves and was sometimes found in vast numbers in caverns untouched by sunlight or vegetation or any other source of food. “One of the main things these individuals subsist on is other individuals,” she said.
Their successful colonization of America had passed largely unnoticed for so many years because they “are neither valued aesthetically, as are birds and butterflies, nor are important economic pests, such as bed bugs and roaches,” the scientists suggest, noting that there is a long history of human and cricket cohabitation, including “one remarkable example of cave art from Paleolithic France depicting the cave-dwelling camel cricket”.