Color of cricket blood

[Roland Slinger]

What color is crickets blood? I just caught a black cricket outside to feed to my true spider (I don't think we have pesticides outside because we have a lot of spiders out that live to be pretty big, and in any case it's just a regular spider so oh well) and he's oozing yellow goo from his behind. Could this be urine perhaps? Or is it blood?

 

[night4now]

Ummm

Whenever I end up cutting my crickets up, its a slightly yellowish puss like ooze that they have inside. Unless they are eating a lot of that complete meal/water cricket food, this is what color mine usually are.

 

[Bill S]

(I don't think we have pesticides outside because we have a lot of spiders out that live to be pretty big, and in any case it's just a regular spider so oh well)

Most of your wild spiders could be feeding on flying insects that won't have been affected by pesticides sprayed around your house. If the spider you are feeding is an orb weaver, then it almost certainly has been eating flying insects.

In any case, one cricket that hasn't absorbed enough poison to be killed wouldn't pass on enough poison to kill a spider. But if you keep feeding this spider potentially poisoned crickets, you could have an effect. (But then again, most orb weavers will die during the fall anyway, and the eggs/babies will carry on next spring to continue the species.)

 

[JimM]

I can scarcely walk anywhere on this property this time of year without walking through a western spotted orb weaver web.