The small cricket mystery

[executivebexley]

How comes there is always one or two crickets that never seem to molt and get bigger than when I first got them??

They molted before I had them to get to around 1cm big, but after a few weeks I'll have a bin full of mature adults chirping away, and 2 random little ones!
I'm sure there were no tiny micro crickets that snuck in!

 

[Poonjab]

Eating their molts, homie

 

[The Snark]

The commonest cause is genetic damage or incomplete / erroneous DNA transmission. The greater the animal's ability to evolve, adapt to varying environments, the more likely there will be some with genetic defects.

 

[Malum Argenteum]

Depending on the timeline, or whether you clean the bin between batches, they could be laying eggs in the bin. I occasionally get a hatch of crickets in gecko enclosures.