The Sunday News
King crickets (common English), Henicus species, Majenya (Shona)
Introduction
THANK you all for the responses on the last article on Jewel beetles, these are still a delicacy in Mashonaland East, Madziwa area and the responses came with some lovely recipes which I can’t wait to try out. Our edible insects for this month are King Crickets, Majenya in Shona and I am unaware of the name in Ndebele although I’m informed these are available in Matabeleland too. You are welcome to send me the name, together with the Ndebele name for last month’s insect, the Jewel beetle.
Description
These, like all other insects have three distinct body segments (head, thorax and abdomen), six legs and no pairs of wings on both sexes.
They are among Africa’s most extraordinary and bizarre insects. These large insects are aggressive, belong to the order Orthoptera with the grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. In this order they belong to the family Stenopelmatidae where all Stenopelmatids are wingless and nocturnal (i.e. night feeding). Most Stenopelmatids are omnivorous (eat both vegetation and meat), and some of the larger ones can even drag away big animals like frogs for food. Most of the species in this family are endemic to Southern Africa and some type specimens are of a Zimbabwean origin for example: Henicus (=Nasidius) whellani which has holotypes housed in some museums. Males of these insects are scary in a close-up view, like something out of a horror movie, because of the grotesque enlarged heads and enormous mandibles (lower jaws) as well as a pair of horn-like features extending from their foreheads and curving slightly downwards. The size ranges for these insects are between 25 millimetres and 55 millimetres long and although varying from species to species they are brown to black in colour and generally the head is abnormally large in comparison with the proportion of the rest of the body. The pair of jaws are quite ludicrous also adding to the scary look and lack of proportion on the head.
The most common genus of these insects is called Henicus, whose males have jaws that are rigid and out of proportion with the tips far away from the mouth such that the use of the jaw is difficult to discern.
The jaws look very scary but are very weak and unable to nip a bite of anything. A second pair of jaws, maxillae exists however. The maxillae are smaller and softer and hidden by a large shield-shaped upper lip that hangs down from the front of the mouth. They are armed at the tips with sharp points and these, together with the mandibles, are probably used to hold food, this is just a guess since not much is known about their food and feeding habits and any account of observations on this topic would be particularly interesting for me.
Hanging below the head are two pairs of jointed palps, which add to the ugly appearance.
They seem to have relatively good eyesight, compared to other insects with small but prominent eyes. They live underground or under a stone during the day and forage at night. Females appear as normal wingless crickets.
Ecology
These insects seem to love the fields and gardens and are often unearthed by farmers and gardeners digging their fields. They are terrestrial. The insects, although rare, are common pests of lawn gardens where they excavate their burrows, in the areas where they are found.
Biology
As general traits in most garden and household cricket species, eggs are laid one by one in the ground and the young that emerge (nymphs), look like a miniature adult and moult six or seven times before reaching maturity –this takes several months. This type of reproduction is incomplete metamorphosis (hemimetabolous).
Harvesting and Preparation
The adult cricket is edible and they are collected for food. When collected, the abdomen is pressed to get rid of the intestines and the lower legs that have spines. What remains is a fat and protein filled “shell” of the insect. This is preserved by drying and stored. As these are burrowing nocturnal insects, they are caught by digging the burrows and following them all the way through until one catches the inhabitants. The common preparation method for the dried insects is to boil in salty water until they are tender then fry in little oil if their natural oil is little, these can be eaten as a snack or as relish with sadza or isitshwala.
This article is written as part of a survey on use of insects as food in Zimbabwe.
For feedback and questions on insects in general and if you’d like to volunteer information on any of these topics: King locusts as food, which areas there is still a practice of eating them and other insects as food, harvesting and preparation, recipes and when they appear please do not hesitate to contact: The Museum Entomologist at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe on: sms or Whatsapp on +263772933071 or post on our Face book page: www.facebook.com/LetsTalkEntomology?ref=hl