Cave Cricket (Spider Cricket)

Family Rhaphidophoridae — the cave crickets, camel crickets, or 'sprickets' (a portmanteau of spider + cricket) — contains over 1,000 species worldwide. The species are characterized by a humped back (giving them the 'camel cricket' name), enormously long hind legs adapted for jumping, no wings, and reduced or absent eyes. They are nocturnal and inhabit caves, mines, basements, root cellars, crawlspaces, and other dark damp spaces. Cave crickets are scavengers — they eat fungi, dead insects, fabric, plant material, paper, and other organic matter. The species' best-known behavior to homeowners is the panic-jump-at-the-threat reflex: with poor or no eyes, the cricket cannot determine which direction a disturbance is coming from, and her instinctive response is to jump in a random direction at high speed. This often results in jumping AT the human disturbance rather than away from it — an unsettling experience that has earned the spricket her informal cultural status. Family Rhaphidophoridae has fossil ancestors dating to the Permian (~250 million years ago); the body plan has barely changed in that time. Some true-cave species (in genus Hadenoecus) have legs proportionally as long as a daddy-long-legs's. Cave crickets are completely harmless to humans, do not bite, and have no venom.