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I just saw a spider on the side of my fish tank and it made me think of something. I know a betta's natural food is mosquitos but are there any other insects a betta will eat? crickets, spiders, etc?

Im sure they wil try, I saw mine take a small species of moth, and microcrickets would probably be eaten too. A lot of small spiders that produce gossamer and drift off in winds will quite naturally end up in water bodies occassionally where bettas live , and they probably do get snapped up.

Only thing is, that whenever you include a livefood, especially wild livefood into the diet, there is always an increased risk of parasite transmission.The choice is really up to you, and some fish appreciate livefoods, but in a bettas case , since they have such tiny mouths its probably better to stick to stuff they can handle easily, like a bit of frozen bloodworm, produced in disease free conditions.

On the whole chucking a small spider in for the betta to feed on is almost no risk, there is a small chance the fish could pick up a few intestinal worms.

cockroaches, mosquitoes, spiders, ants... if it moves near the water, they'll have a shot. The ants really surprised me, I would have thought they'd be too acidic, but they seemed really popular.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett