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Experiments
The idea
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To explain you our experiment: during all our researches we heard that it would be better for the environment if edible crickets could be fed with organic waste. To know if crickets would be able to eat different types of food we had the idea to set up an experiment in our high school. Indeed we thought about feeding differently some crickets and see which crickets would be bigger than the others, depending on their food.
The preparation
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This is why we chose to make a breeding of crickets in 3 big boxes. In the first box we wanted to recreate the natural environment of the crickets. To do that we put grass, soil, little pebbles and water. In the second box the grass was replaced by apple and in the third box apple was replaced by oat bran. We chose these 2 other types of food (apple and oat bran) because we wanted a fruit or a vegetable and a cereal that crickets would be able to eat, because it was not too big for them.
Ethical issues
Maybe you think that it was bad to use animals for our experiment and the fact that they died but in reality they were supposed to be eaten by reptiles anyway. Indeed they were sold as reptilian food.
Furthermore at the beginning we just wanted to know how their weight would vary according to their food. Unfortunately because of the winter conditions (like the temperature) crickets died suddenly.
As we did not want their death to be vain, we decided to use them to continue our project and start a new experiment.
In fact, using crickets to measure their protein rate was not our first idea, but it was the only solution not to waste a lot of time and start a new experiment all over again.
The beginning
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To achieve our experiment we bought 24 crickets (22nd November 2017) in a garden center. They were sold as reptilian food. We also bought some oat bran and apples. Unfortunately when we bought our crickets, 3 were already dead. So we put 6 crickets in the box with grass, 7 crickets in the box with apple and 8 in the box with oat bran. Just 2 weeks later (5th December 2017), we saw that there were already 3 dead crickets in the grass box, 4 in the oat box and 2 in the apple box, mainly because of climatic conditions. So we had to deal with an ethical issue, and re-adapt our experiment.
(Go check our part "ethical issues" in the footer)
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Turn of events
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Because of the fact that all our crickets died naturally, we decided to measure their protein rate. For that we did the Biuret’s reaction on the 9 last crickets. There were 2 nourished with apple, 3 with grass and 4 with flakes. They all weighted around 0.7g. After we put them in proofer at 80°C during 75 min, to take off water, their weight decreased to 0.2 or 0.3 g. After we mashed them with a mortar, separately according to their food (so on one side we mashed crickets nourished by apple, on other side by oat bran and on another side by grass). Then we put the 3 obtained substances in 3 different test tubes, and in all of them we put 1 mL of a protein solution, 0.2 mL of a solution concentrated with 20% soda and then we added drop by drop Copper Sulphate 1%. To finish, we shook each mixture.
Then, on top of our three mixtures, we prepared another one but with a little piece of a lamb’s heart. We did the same experiment as before.
If a purple loop appears in our tubes, it reveals they contain proteins. The thicker is the loop, the higher is the concentration in proteins. And we deduced thanks to our experiment that the tube with crickets nourished with apple had more proteins than those with lamb meat because its loop was bigger. (see pictures on the right)
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So thanks to our experiment we have proven that crickets are a very good way to eat proteins, better than usual meat. This experiment was really representative of what we saw in "Advantages" concerning the nutritional aspect.
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