Black Canadian cricket turns RED ???????????

Krawll · Black Canadian cricket turns RED ???????????

Hi everyone. Just in case you haven't read my first post where i introdudce myself :-) i'm a new member on this forum, i was invited by Johnnyster on another forum i was posting on .

So, i have a question about crickets that might end up unanswered because i've never seen anything like that .

I have been keeping 2 little wolf spiders as pets for the past 3 weeks or so and 1 little jumper. I've been feeding them with very tiny black crickets that i found in my back yard . Since i have only little experience about the caring of spiders, and i didn't know how often they normaly eat, i've simply put a few crickets in eatch of my spider's containers and i just thought they could eat them whenever they get hungry. They realy don't eat nearly as much as i thought they would ::lol::.

The last 3 crickets i've put in there were still alive a week later. All 3 of them were still jumping around in the container or hiding under the leafs i put in there and stuff like that . So anyways , 2 days ago as i was checking up on my spider , also wanted to see if she had eaten anything , i noticed that one out of the 3 crickets had turned totally red. I definatly took pictures of that because i had never seen anything like this before with any of the crickets i had previously put in there. The URLs to the pictures will be at the bottom of this message :-)

My question is What the hell could make a cricket change color like that. Oh and by the way, the next day all 3 crickets were black again. Only one of them changed color and it only lasted for a day or so.

The two first pictures will be the red cricket and ill send a third one where you will see the normal color of those crickets .

So could this have happened because of a lack or water? or maybe a lack of light or heat or maybe because of something the cricket eat or maybe a very very small parasite that i might have put in there without knowing it while i put the substrate in the container ??? Also , could this make the cricket dangerous to eat for my pet?? Could my pet get sick for eating it? even though the feeder has returned to his normal color now?

If you think you might have a logicle answer plz share it :-) this might be interesting for other people reading this as well :-)

Thx in advance

Here are the URLs

- http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk300/Krawll02/DSCN2285.jpg
- http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk300/Krawll02/DSCN2286.jpg
- http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk300/Krawll02/DSCN2289.jpg

on the third picture you can also see my little wolf Spider and the cricket thats right there not too far from her is the bigest i put in there , the two other ones are about half the size of this one. I would never give my spiders crickets that are bigger than she is ::lol::.

Just in case anyone is interested, my pets are from the Genus Trochosa, though i have yet to figure out whether the species is Terricola or Sp.
they were found in the southern part of the province of quebec in canada. Witch is where i live :-)

Pulk

no idea on the cricket thing. as for the wolf's binomial nomenclature...

terricola is a species in the genus, but "sp." stands for species and is used when the species is unknown or when describing something that applies to the whole genus. so you do have Trochosa sp.; the question is whether it is Trochosa terricola or something else Smile

Krawll

Wow thx alot ::lol::. I have been wondering what the hell Sp. standed for , for a long time now and had yet to figure it out and you just clarified this whole thing for me .

I knew that this Sp. thing couldn't be a species of it's own since i've seen those Sp. letters coming back on almost every Genus from every families. The only reason i mentioned it was eighter a Terricola or a Sp. is because i had been looking up pictures on the web and found some that were very similar to my spider and the title of the picture was Trochosa Sp. and i had found other pictures titled Trochosa Terricola so untill now i had no idea what Sp. realy meant.

Thx again Smile

Celeste

Could it just be that the cricket molted? If so, it would be light in color for a few hours, gradually darkening back to its original black, and possibly look very red as its new exoskeleton hardened.

-- Celeste

Pulk

oh... yeah.

that's what happens when you try to answer a question at 2 am Rolling Eyes

Krawll

Yup that is the kinda logicle answer i was hoping to get ::lol::. It makes alot of sense now that you mention it :-)

thx alot.