These bizarre looking creatures are known commonly as ARMOURED GROUND CRICKETS and they originally come from Tanzania in eastern Africa, although my crickets were bred by a friend of mine in Wales!  As you can see they have an unusual looking but beautiful face (depending on your point of view I guess!) and the following pictures are all of mature females:

As you can see from the picture above, the females can become quite large and their bodies appear swollen due to the numbers of eggs they are carrying!  When they are a bit younger they have the most beautiful turquoise colouration on their faces as you can see below:

These crickets get the name 'armoured' due to their impressive body structure which has lots of tough parts.  These include the spines on the front legs which you can see in many of the pictures above, and the very tough-looking spines on the thorax as seen below!

I personally find these crickets especially fascinating and enjoy watching them in their enclosure.  They eat a mixture of live and dead insects as well as many different fruits and vegetables, and they will eat pretty much anything you offer them - they certainly love their food!

As you can see from the picture below, they have very sticky pads on their feet which allow them to climb extremely well, even on glass!