Tom White

The other reason is because crickets are kind of like the cow or the pig of the insect world.

So they are heavily domesticated the world over.

And we rear them, we farm them in their hundreds of millions, and that's projected to grow very, very rapidly into the future.

We use them for things like aquaculture, so feeding to fish, and as alternate sources of protein.

So it makes sense as a bit of a priority that we'd like to know if they do have welfare interests, if their lives can go better or worse for them, because we're interacting with them at a massive scale.

So we are mostly a behaviour lab.

So we work with these whole animals and we ask them all sorts of questions and watch them behave.

So these particular crickets, once they did the kindness to participate in our experiments, they just lived out the rest of their lives for a month or two, had all the food and water they wanted, had access to...

their buddies if they needed it in our cages in the lab and they lived out the course of their natural lives.

And that's something we've actually always done because I can't do it unless it's absolutely necessary.

We just actually find it too hard to euthanise insects.

There are always exceptions.

For me, in the invertebrate world, I do struggle a bit with leeches.

I find them... I love all living things and I love all invertebrates, but leeches do kind of give me the willies.

So I admit they stretch my intuitions.

So David Attenborough is always there.

hi everyone tom white here welcome to sky sports fc the place to have your say on the biggest football stories join me and the very best premier league pundits monday to friday 10 till 12 on sky sports news or listen on our brand new podcast which drops as soon as we come off air on the pod you can expect hot takes fierce debate

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What's the ref called?

Taylor.