Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

All right, I know about half of you are really grossed out right now, but stay around and hear me out! This is a critter in desperate need of more love: the Parktown Prawn! Actually this is not a prawn but a kind of cricket, the King Cricket Libanasidus vittatus. It is not a true cricket either, but in a related family. This huge and fearsome-looking cricket has been freaking people out to the point of becoming a local legend. Parktown is a suburb of Johannesburg, which along with Pretoria is the place that has experienced the greatest recent 'invasion' of these insects.

Frankenprawn?

A myth going round has been that this is actually a creature that has been artificially bred/hybridised/genetically engineered in a secret South African experiment in the late sixties. Of course this is a real, natural species, only having started to move out of its small, natural range around that time. But it's still weird enough to seem quite out-of-this world.

These are some of the largest insects in South Africa. They can reach a head-and-body length of 7.5 cm/3" but the powerful hind legs and long, thin antennae more than double this measurement. With their strong legs they can jump more than a metre/yard. All six legs have hard, sharp spines along the edges for self-defense. Both sexes are orange-yellow with black stripes on the body, but the male has a huge and bright orange-red head. Making it even more frightening are the large, pointed tusks on its mandibles. The males probably fight each other using these. The female can be distinguished by lacking these tusks, instead having a long, sword-like, upcurved extension at the rear of her abdomen. This is her ovipositor, with which she lays her eggs in damp topsoil.

Hardy Adventurers

Originally living in small pockets of forest in northern South Africa, these crickets have been expanding their range, taking advantage of the pleasant year-round growth in suburban gardens, and being bold and adventurous, also make a habit of entering people's homes. They are hard to catch; they're energetic and will run and leap away. Should you be 'lucky' enough to catch one it will use its strong legs, squirming and kicking and pricking you with its spines. It may 'screech' disturbingly by rubbing its hind legs against its abdomen. It will also try and bite you, and to cap it all will squirt out noxiously smelly, black feces.

Bane or Boon?

A legend about these 'prawns' is that they will at night climb up to your bed and gnaw off your hair. This is quite untrue, but still, they have on occasion been found on or even in people's beds, which is a not very pleasant surprise. Equally upsetting is finding one in your shoe, in your handbag or in the toilet bowl just as you're about to sit down and get comfortable. Other than scaring people the only actual damage they do indoors is occasionally gnawing at carpets, rugs or other fabrics. Although they cannot digest wood they also sometimes chew on floorboards or wooden garden furniture.

In gardens these crickets are actually very valuable. Unlike common crickets they are not herbivores but omnivores. They will rather eat dead, rotten vegetation than living plants, and will not damage flowers or other plants. They will eat snails and other garden pests instead. They will also eat carrion, fallen fruit, and even dog droppings! In turn they themselves are eaten by large birds such as the Hadeda Ibis or Helmeted Guineafowl, which are always welcome garden visitors. Parktown prawns can thus be considered natural pest control, and a valuable asset to garden ecology. The best advice I can give for prawnophobic people is to try and stop up gaps by which large crickets might enter houses, to try and shoo them out when they do get in, and to leave them in peace in the gardens!

Relatives in New Zealand

The Parktown prawn is a relative of the wetas of New Zealand, some of the largest of all insects and equally fearsome looking. These have given their name to the Weta Workshop, which is the company doing the lavish special effects for movies such as 'Avatar' and the 'Lord of the Rings' movies. Actual wetas, but very much exaggerated in size, appear in Peter Jackson's movie 'King Kong' of 2005.

Alien Inspiration

Interestingly Weta Workshop also helped with the special effects for the South African movie 'District 9'. The aliens in that movie are disparagingly nicknamed 'Prawns'. Seeing as the movie takes place around Johannesburg, it is very likely that Parktown Prawns, their fearsome reputation and the undeserved discrimination under which they suffer were all elements inspiring the naming of these aliens. There is also a good degree of resemblance to these crickets – Parktown Prawns as well as Wetas – in their insect-like appearance.

Colours of Wildlife Archive

Willem

22.04.13 Front Page

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