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“What does a camel cricket bite feel like?” is a common question. The answer might surprise you. It feels like nothing because camel crickets do not have the ability to bite! While some other types of crickets can bite, camel crickets aka cave crickets do not have the body parts necessary to deliver a bite.
The Camel Cricket Bite & Other Fun Facts
In some cultures, crickets in your home can be considered good luck. Some cultures even keep them in fancy cages to enjoy their melodious chirping. Most people in New Jersey and the rest of the U.S. want crickets kept away from their house. At Kapture, we get lots of questions about crickets like “Does the camel cricket bite?” or “Why are crickets so loud at night?”. If you live in New Jersey, you may find that in September and October, that melodious chirping becomes quite annoying. It may even be keeping you awake when you’d much rather be sleeping.
The most common species of cricket found in New Jersey is the cave cricket also known as the camel cricket. As the cooler weather sets in, you may find that you have an abundance of these little fellows nesting along the exterior of your home, or worse, chirping in the corner of your bedroom.
When in nature, the cave cricket likes to reside in caves. If there are no caves available, they will choose to live in damp leaves, rotten logs, or under a cool damp stone. The sand treader relative prefers to burrow into the sand. They will stay underground during the day and become active at night.
One of the reasons you might not want these chirpy little visitors like camel crickets in your house is their dietary choice. While a camel cricket bite is actually impossible due to their mouth parts, you would probably still decide pretty quickly that they are becoming a nuisance—living with them happily feasting on your house plants and fabrics, such as your curtains, is no fun.
The Camel Cricket: Appearance
You can positively identify this cricket species by looking for the following traits:
- Camel Cricket bodies are light brown and approximately 5 centimeters in length, not including the legs.
- Their hind legs are large, antennae long, and they can jump—far and high.
- Camel Cricket bodies are slightly bent forward and humped at the back, looking a bit like a camel which is how they got their nickname.
How Does a Camel Cricket Get in Your Home?
Crickets are only capable of reproducing in their outdoor habitat. Therefore, they need a dark and damp location. When there is a severe drought or extremely heavy rainfall, crickets find a way to enter your house to escape the dry or overly wet conditions. Crickets prefer damp areas like a crawl space, a basement, or even a bathroom. These areas are most important to watch if you want to avoid a camel cricket bite. Just kidding—they don’t bite! That is just a myth.
And since they also can’t fly, they enter the house by either crawling or jumping into available spaces. They find their way inside through:
- Gaps in weather stripping
- Open garage doors
- Vents
- Open doors or windows
Myths of the Camel Cricket
Myth #1:
The Camel Cricket Bite
A camel cricket bite is not possible. Unlike some insects, they lack fangs or venom and don’t have mouthparts capable of breaking skin. They may look intimidating with their long legs and hunched backs, but they’re harmless when it comes to biting people or your pets. While some crickets like field or house crickets can technically nip at human skin, camel crickets belong to a completely different family and behave very differently. They don’t bite or harm humans in any way. In fact, camel crickets can’t bite PLUS they don’t even have vocal organs meaning they cannot produce the chirp that true crickets are known for.
Myth #2:
Camel Crickets Transmit Diseases
Even if they could bite, they do not carry diseases or illnesses dangerous to humans.
Myth #3:
Camel Crickets Don’t Bite Because They Aren’t Crickets
Not true. Camel crickets are a different species of cricket than the typical house or field crickets you might be used to hearing. So while a camel cricket bite is not a thing, you can technically receive a small bite from other cricket species.
Myth #4:
Camel Crickets are Aggressive
When a cricket gets scared they jump out of defensiveness. The problem is that their eyesight is horrendous and they often end up jumping toward you rather than away from you.
10 Fun Cricket Facts
- While you may not appreciate crickets invading your home, they are extremely interesting and have unique characteristics from other insects—and each other. For instance, here are some facts you may not have known about these tiny chirping creatures. They are not only fascinating, but they are arguably one of the most important insects in the world.
- They are considered a food delicacy in many areas of the world and there are a plethora of ways to prepare them. For instance, Thailand deep-fries and seasons them with Thai pepper powder—this style is known as Jing Leed—and serves them with beer.
- There are over 900 species around the world. Each one sounds unique when it chirps.
- While camel crickets don’t bite or chirp, they do look a bit scary. Their extremely long hind legs and humped back can often be confused for a type of spider from a distance.
- Crickets don’t have lungs. Therefore, they don’t breathe through their mouths or nostrils. They take in air through a small series of holes located on the side of their bodies, called spiracles.
- There is a misconception the chirping sound results from rubbing their legs together. Instead, crickets create the sound by rubbing their wings together. Wings have teeth that are arranged in a comb pattern. There are 300 of these teeth on each wing. They rub the comb against the edge of the opposite wing.
- Crickets don’t hear sounds through their ears. Instead, they hear sounds through an auditory organ on their front legs. You read correctly, their ears are located on their front legs!
- Crickets do not carry disease but their droppings can be an allergen for some people. So if you see crickets in your house and you can’t stop sneezing, you might have found the culprit.
- You can gauge temperature just by listening to cricket chirping. Simply count how many times a cricket chirps in one minute. Then, divide the number by 4 and add 40. This gives you the outside temperature!
- Just when you thought dogs and roosters were the only animals used for fighting, did you know China has been using these insects for fighting for over 1,000 years? The Chinese breed and sell fighters. A cricket capable of fighting and of excellent breeding can be valued as much as $1,600.
Professional Cricket Control
While a camel cricket bite or cricket bites in general are not really a cause for concern in your home, these insects can be a nuisance and still cause damage to some of your favorite things. Infestations are possible so call our Kapture Pest Control experts if you have tried all the home remedies for removing unwanted chirping insects and you are not successful OR you have any deterioration and chewing on curtains, fabrics, plants, etc. We’re here to help!
