I wanna raise crickets for the sound
I have Tinnitus and I love the sound of crickets. Recordings are nice but they don't hit nearly as well. I have a hearing aid which is nice but real crickets are much better. They hit a whole bunch of frequencies that provide me with great relaxation.
Has anyone here raised crickets? I do not intend to eat them. Just hear some real crickets every night when I go to sleep. Perhaps on a small box near my bed.
I live in a house with some space I can use. I"m in Northeast Brazil (Salvador, Bahia).
According to Wikipedia this is the kind of climate here
Salvador has a trade-wind tropical rainforest climate (Köppen: Af). Temperatures are relatively consistent, showing little variance throughout the course of the year. Salvador's driest months of the year are December and January, when the city receives on average less than 10 cm (4 in) of precipitation. Salvador's wettest months are April, May and June, when at least 20 cm (8 in) of rain falls during each of these three months.
Too crazy or actually possible?
You tell me!
There are people who raise crickets for pet lizards and such, so there's no reason why you couldn't. Just be careful not to let any escape their enclosure or your whole house will get infested.
As someone who lived in an old farmhouse at one point:
A chorus of crickets through an open window? Lovely, sweet summer.
That one cricket that found its way into the bedroom closet at 9pm? FML
What have you tried in terms of the hardware for the pre-recorded tracks? If it's just your phone or some Bluetooth speaker then yeah that will feel too fake and isolated. A little 2.1 sound bar setup on the otherside of the room will sound significantly better.
Personally I would vet that option fully first as having to raise crickets and listen to them all the time whether you want to or not may turn into hell. And I'm no cricketologist but I would think you would need a lot of crickets to get to something of a nice symphony.
Just adding to this, but if you can find a high quality recording, you could probably try out a bunch of speakers at a local electronics store (Best Buy) or whatnot instead of buying and returning every 2.1 set on Amazon 😅
I hope you (Lou) can find something that works :) I’ve definitely had nights where I had to put on headphones with background noise to sleep; it’s not the most pleasant thing.
have you ever tried this thing? https://generalfuzz.net/acrn
as for raising them, when you go into a pet store and it smells terrible, that's the crickets. I think they only live for two months, so it might be worth getting a lizard too.
Can I get the crickets to reproduce so they're a sustainable population? I wouldn't wanna go to the pet store very often to buy new crickets.
I never saw crickets on a pet store here by the way. Exotic pets are not super common here. So I may need to actually order crickets somehow.
I might be able to forage crickets from my surroundings. Not sure how but there are some where I live.
its been a long time since I looked into this. I thought they would make for a fun pet for a kid along with some sort of low-maintenance lizard.
I think the trickiest part will be getting them to call out to the females, which is that sound. From what I understand, they breed like crazy, though. The boys have three points out the back and the gals only have two. Not sure if you raise them all together or have to separate to get that sensual mating music :)
I could order 500 local crickets and release them near my bedroom window. Their population might grow and eventually I would have free range crickets singing near me in perpetuity. But I suppose that's quite irresponsible, isn't it? :P
haha I mean... you'll end up with a shitload of crickets. The local birds might love you forever. The only concern I'd have are parasites that could mess with the local crickets.
if you end up on the news, please delete this thread :)
Seasonal too, depending on if crickets can survive year round there.
I’m curious what is the minimum number you would need to get your vibes right. If you just release a bunch, they’ll probably get eaten, fail to find food, succumb to the winter weather, etc. There’s a reason they aren’t already there. But in a cage, with you providing the food, protection from the elements, etc, could you get away with just a few?
Around me, the crickets are usually in a drawer at the pet store, generally behind the counter so the cashier can just load up a bag when you checkout, or back by the lizards. The aren’t on display- they are just food that nobody wants to acknowledge and putting them visibly near the lizards would probably dent lizard sales.
As someone with tinnitus that slightly resembles crickets and is made significantly worse by having to listen to them, you seem like a crazy person, but I wish you good luck in your quest!
Surely there must be books that include some information on how to raise crickets. Try asking an LLM that is able to search the internet about the books or other sources (ChatGPT 5 is fine), LLMs are often great tools for specifically looking up things that you don't know how to query on google.
There are certain pitches of sound that pierce my brain like an ice pick. Crickets are one. I cannot bear that sound in any context. I am glad that I am not neighbors with someone raising these insects.
I wouldn't wanna raise enough crickets to disrupt the neighborhood that's for sure! Granted, I don't know how many crickets I need nor how far can their sound can travel from my bedroom. In any case, I would definitely keep an eye on noise pollution and shut down the project if I there's no way to avoid it.
Their tone isn't as high-pitched as crickets, but how do you feel about cicadas?
I love this idea and I think you should totally go for it!! I've always needed some king of background noise to fall asleep, right now I just use a fan but would really love a waterfall of some sorts, something like the sound of rain.