Reasons why:
1.) roaches eat just about everything, and so do earwigs.
2.) earwigs thrive in a similar environment to roaches.
3.) their social interactions between themselves and other earwigs is fascinating (I’ll elaborate further down.)
4.) like roaches, they can be kept communally.
So then, have I piqued your interest?
Getting Your Pet
As any gardener will probably tell you, earwigs are everywhere. Just look moist places, such as under stepping stones, boards, rocks, rotting logs—anywhere around your house that stays moist. If pesticides have been sprayed around your home, however, you may have a hard time finding any earwigs (or other bugs for that matter,) and those you find may not last very long because they have probably been exposed already. If that’s the case, go somewhere where pesticides haven’t been sprayed and look. Don’t be afraid of their pincers; they may look intimidating and be able to pinch, but it doesn’t hurt. :)
Housing
Although I said that earwigs are communal above, they will practice cannibalism if there are too many in too little a place or too little food for the population. I suspect that their cannibalistic tendencies would be heightened by being put in a confined space with other earwigs that they have never “met” before and are unrelated to them, but I cannot attest to that from experience, since mine came from the story below where I found about 50 young ‘uns scattering in all directions under a board, where their mother tried (vainly) to keep tabs on everyone, therefore mine are all related. I think their cannibalism is to keep their own population under control, so if you collect too many for the container you have, they will “thin the herd” so to speak. I have about 4 left from the 15 I collected then.
I keep mine in an empty salted nuts jar from Costco. You could go as small as that, or you could go all the way up to aquarium sizes, if you collected lots (I’m talking 100+). It’s all your preference. :) Give them several inches of moist substrate in the container of your choice, then give them some pieces of bark or something to hide under. If you’re having issues with mold under their hides, then introduce some isopods. (Warning: the isopods will breed like crazy. Speaking from personal experience here.)
Food
Like I said before, earwigs will eat most anything. They are omnivores, which means they eat both meat and vegetable matter. Feed them every 2-3 days. Mine love flaked goldfish food, the occasional bit of dry cat food, and grass or romaine lettuce for their dose of veggies. I also feed them leftovers from my spiders, tossing discarded prey items in there for them to recycle, though I make sure there is no webbing still attached that might stick to my earwigs when they come in to feed. You’ll get a feel for how much to feed them. If it’s gone fast enough that it doesn’t get moldy, then you haven’t fed too much.
Well, I said I’d explain their group dynamics. From watching mine interact over food items in their cage, I can say they interact with each other in a manner somewhere between mice, chickens, and a pack of wild dogs, if that makes any sense at all. :P The dog part is when everyone is huddled around a piece of dry cat food and I get the feeling that if anyone makes a wrong move the others will pinch them. Sometimes they hold their pinchers straight up in readiness, even. The mouse part comes when they swarm over the food. It’s like watching a bunch of mice. And the chicken part, well, sometimes they play “keep away” and drag a flake of goldfish food 2x their size around their container to keep it from the others.
All in all, they are very interesting critters, and I hope you’ll try keeping them to see for yourself. :)