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Crickets are a variety of insect with long antennae and legs that most closely resemble grasshoppers. They eat plants and even meat, on every continent except Antarctica.
Crickets are perhaps best known for the chirping sounds they make at night, which help them find mates or scare off other male crickets. Normally, when people make a sound they use their vocal chords. Crickets, however, use their wings! Each wing has tiny little edges along the bottom, and by rubbing them together a cricket can produce four different types of calls. The wings also act as amplifiers, which is how such a tiny creature can make so much noise. So what do crickets eat?
First you might want to know that crickets are commonly used and sold as food for pet reptiles, although some people like to keep them as pets themselves. Crickets are considered to be good luck in many cultures, so if you would like to know what to feed your lucky little pets, read on. This page also covers how to feed crickets so that they are packed with nutrition for your reptiles, a process called gut loading.

What do Crickets Eat and Drink?

Crickets are omnivorous, meaning they eat both plants and animals depending on what's available to them. They prefer rotting plant matter, but they will also munch on tender leaves, fungi and fruit when the opportunity presents itself. They like to burrow into the undergrowth of wooded areas, where there's plenty of food as well as shelter from predators. If they can catch other insects or bugs, they will also enjoy a meaty snack. A colony of crickets that have run out of food may even turn on weaker members in an act of cannibalism. As you might have guessed, most crickets aren't very discriminating about their diet; the truth is, a cricket will eat just about anything. If one finds its way into your house, you may find chewed up papers and even holes in your clothes from exploratory nibbling. If you have pet crickets, a varied diet will keep them happy, healthy and non-cannibalistic. Leafy vegetables such as cabbage and lettuce, fruits like apples and grains like cereals and bread are all healthy choices your crickets will love.

How to feed store bought Crickets?

Crickets make great food for snakes, fish in larger aquariums, and are even used as bait for fishing. Whether you want to keep your crickets alive as a pet, for feeding snakes, or to have them for the next time you go fishing you need to feed them well. The crickets you purchase in a store will normally not live more than a week because they have been fed a minimal diet, which mostly consisted of wet cardboard boxes and the other crickets that died and were cannibalized. What do crickets eat? Well the best way to get crickets eating is to change the food you feed them every few days. Start by slicing up and apple, if you have apples or other fruits that have started to get over ripe, your pet crickets will love to eat them. If you have leftover grits or oatmeal your pet crickets will be more than happy to finish them for you. If you want to feed them something more natural you can always go to the woods and find rotten branches and other detritus on the forest floor.

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