What do mole crickets like to eat? Are they pests? Can they be eaten? How are they farmed?
The mole cricket is an extremely common insect, also called tugouzi, and is generally known as lalagu or dilagu. It has a long body with a very soft, round belly, and often appears at the edges of fields at night. So what do mole crickets like to eat? Can they be eaten? How are they farmed?
The mole cricket, commonly known as genggou, lalagu, babagou, tugouzai (in the Southwest region), dubi (dubizai), lalagu, dilagu (in the Northeast), tianxiaogou (in Jiangsu and Zhejiang), tudi gouer (in the central Jiangsu area), and also called jianliuzai (the Taiwanese term for “pickpocket”), is called tugouzi in Sichuan. It belongs to the order Orthoptera, family Gryllotalpidae. The main types include the northern mole cricket, the oriental mole cricket, the Taiwan mole cricket and the common mole cricket. The northern mole cricket, also called the single-spurred mole cricket, is mainly distributed across the north.
The oriental mole cricket is distributed throughout China, with more severe damage in the south. The Taiwan mole cricket occurs in Taiwan, China, Guangdong and Guangxi. The common mole cricket is found only in Xinjiang.
What do mole crickets eat?
The mole cricket is an omnivorous pest; it eats almost all crops, so all are harmed by it. When crops are young, it not only bites through the tender stems but also eats the seeds; after the crops grow larger, it bites the roots into thread-like strands. In any damaged field with large numbers of mole crickets, because the mole crickets dig tunnels underground, the young roots of the crops are separated from the soil, the seedlings dry up, and the farmland ends up with missing plants and broken rows. So the mole cricket is a true, veritable underground pest.
Characteristics of the mole cricket
It is generally active at night, but when the temperature is suitable it can also be active during the day. When the relative soil humidity is 22-27%, damage by the northern mole cricket is most severe. When the soil is dry, it is less active and causes lighter damage. Adults are phototactic. In summer and autumn, when the temperature is between 18-22°C and the wind speed is less than 1.5 m/s, large numbers of mole crickets can be attracted at night with lights. Mole crickets can run backwards quickly, especially inside their burrows. Both adults and nymphs are good swimmers, and the female has the habit of guarding her eggs and nursing her young. Nymphs can only act independently from the 4th instar. The occurrence of mole crickets is closely related to the environment; they often inhabit plains, lightly saline-alkali land, and low-lying, wet zones along rivers, near the sea and near lakes, especially sandy loam and areas rich in humus.
Can mole crickets be eaten?
Mole crickets are fairly common in the Deqing area of Guangdong, and count as a local health-giving food ingredient there; they can be stir-fried or deep-fried, with a unique flavour, and if handled properly they have no unusual smell. It is said that this thing is very masculine in nature.
How to eat mole crickets
Mainly deep-fried: tear off the short wings, fry in oil until golden brown, and sprinkle with fine salt. They have a slight earthy taste, a crisp texture, and no particularly distinctive insect flavour; they probably do not contain much protein, and taste similar to silkworms, hornets and bamboo worms. Mole crickets undergo incomplete metamorphosis.
Medicinal value of the mole cricket
Medicinal name: mole cricket
Alternative names: huigu, tianlou, louguo, xiangu, shishu, wushu, dugou.
Meridian entry: enters the bladder, large intestine and small intestine meridians. Enters the stomach and bladder meridians.
Nature and flavour: salty, cold, slightly toxic.
Mole crickets are used for excess syndromes such as severe abdominal oedema and difficult urination, and can be combined with knoxia and lilac daphne. To treat urinary retention, mole crickets can be roasted until scorched, ground while hot, and taken mixed with yellow rice wine or boiled water.
Effects of the mole cricket:
The dried body of the mole cricket is used as medicine; it has the effects of promoting urination, reducing swelling and detoxifying. Clinically, mole crickets are used to treat urinary stones, oedema, ascites due to liver cirrhosis, chronic nephritis and uraemia, retained placenta, postoperative urinary retention, and retention of both urine and stool caused by obstruction of the intestines and bladder, and are applied to draw out iron nails, wood, bamboo and foreign objects that have sunk into the flesh.
Contraindications for mole cricket use: people with weak qi and a frail constitution, and pregnant women, should all avoid taking mole crickets.
Mole cricket farming techniques
1. Building the pond: for large-scale rearing, first build a rearing pond with a brick-and-lime structure. It is 3-4 m long, 2 m wide and 2 m deep. The lower part is filled with 1 m of loam, lightly compacted. Then fill in 20 cm of moist, loose soil containing farmyard manure or humus, and scatter a layer of fermented cow dung or horse dung, chopped wheat straw and grain chaff on the surface as an activity and protective layer for the mole crickets, then loosely place a layer of long wheat straw, corn cobs, rice straw, etc. For shade and insulation, cover the pond opening with an iron gauze dome.
2. Stocking: mole crickets have strong phototaxis, so in April-May and September-October each year, electric lights, black-light lamps and mercury lamps can be used after dark ‘to trap adults in the wild near village houses. From the trapped adults, remove individuals with missing limbs, that are thin and small, diseased, or badly worn, and process them into goods; keep high-quality individuals as breeding stock. Keep the two kinds of mole cricket in separate ponds, stocking 10 pairs per square metre in each pond.
3. Feeding and management: green feed for mole crickets includes wheat seedlings, millet seedlings, corn, sorghum, tender leaves, melon and fruit peels or other vegetable leaves, etc.; concentrated feed includes cooked and sun-dried grain, roasted soybean cake, peanut cake residue, wheat bran, etc. Feed in the evening, and it is best if the amount put in can be finished. Green feed is given daily, concentrated feed once every 2-3 days. Feed often and in small amounts to prevent mould. Processing the concentrated feed into blocks can avoid and reduce mould; the production method and formula are as follows: 5000 g of dried grass-family seedling powder, 500 g of wheat bran (roasted), 50 g of dry yeast, 1000 g of soybean cake powder (roasted), 1500 mL of clean water. Stir the above feed into a thick paste, press into thin cakes, cut into small pieces, and sun-dry for storage. When feeding, crush into rice-grain-sized pieces and put them into the pond, along with green feed. If the temperature in the mole cricket rearing pond is too high, shade it or splash water around the pond to cool it; if it is too dry, splash some water in the pond to increase humidity. In winter, set up windbreaks beside the pond and place straw inside the pond for insulation.
4. Harvesting and processing: for artificially reared mole crickets, the oriental mole cricket is harvested once a year, while the northern mole cricket is harvested every other year, once it becomes adult. Each spring, pick out the adults from the 20 cm-deep humus soil in the pond using a large-mesh sieve and remove debris, keeping some high-quality insects as breeding stock. If a lot of insect droppings are found in the soil, or it clumps or contains parasitic mites, the layer of soil should be replaced. Remove the head, wings and legs of the harvested adults, clean out the innards, wash them, scald them to death in boiling water, and sun-dry or oven-dry them. For eating, the fresh insects can be directly deep-fried, pan-fried, boiled or steamed, and processed into flavoured foods.