Deadly cricket virus decimating North American captive bred cricket population, impacting pet industry, zoos

A virus which causes captive bred crickets to flip onto their backs and die from paralysis has jumped across the Atlantic ocean, decimating at least one Michigan cricket breeding operation, reports the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Top Hat Crickets, located in Portage, has been forced to shut down operations and lay off all 30 of its employees as a result of the outbreak. The virus made its debut in the Portage facility in April. Officials at the company tried various methods to contain the virus, including destroying 30 million crickets and bleaching the facility. But the virus came back when a new crop of hatchling crickets were brought into the facility.

Experts say the Portage facility is not the only one in North American being decimated.

“My Canadian contact said it is spreading through the cricket industry there like wildfire,” said Suzanne Thiem, insect virologist at Michigan State University.

The virus does not appear to have an impact on the animals who eat the crickets, the Gazette reports. And while this might seem like a nothing situation, it does have broader implications for the pet industry as well as zoos and other facilities that keep animals that require crickets to survive.

The pet industry is a $45 billion industry in the United States, and crickets are key staple in the care and keeping of reptiles.

“When the economy was going down, our business was going up” as interest in pet reptiles and amphibians grew, Eldred said. A survey conducted last year by The American Pet Products Association showed 4.7 million U.S. households kept 13.6 million pet reptiles. Feeder crickets are the preferred food of frogs, toads, other reptiles and lizards, according to the survey.

And the Gazette reports that John Ball Park Zoo in Grand Rapids feeds an estimated 8000 crickets to its reptiles and amphibians every two weeks.

While in Europe producers switched to different species of crickets as it only effects one species, the brown house cricket, that is not an option in the U.S.

Alyn Kiel, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the import of any insect that might prove a threat to U.S. agriculture or the environment is prohibited. Any proposal to import insects is scrutinized through a permitting process.

“Our scientists here have been exploring domestic alternatives (to the brown house cricket) that might fit the needs of the industry,” Kiel said.

The impact of this virally-induced crisis could impact the pet industry with negative growth numbers, something the industry has not seen in years.