It’s such a proven phenomenon that you can use it to calculate the temperature. You can use cricket songs as a thermometer.Ĭrickets call more frequently when the weather gets hotter.
Crickets also sing to intimidate rival males, and some of a male’s more romantic tunes may trigger nearby females to fight each other. Many of them have a whole repertoire of calls: There’s one for attracting females from afar, another for close-up courtship, and even a triumphal after-mating song. But crickets don’t just sing a pretty song and wait for the admirers to trickle in. So why do male crickets (usually) chirp? 4. And males of some cricket species never make a peep. There are exceptions: Some female mole crickets (relatives of “true” crickets) sing. Most female crickets lack those sound-making wing structures. That cricket in your house that’s endlessly chirping away? It’s probably a male. Scientists have even managed to recreate the sound of an extinct cricket relative, a fossilized Jurassic bush cricket (katydid), by examining the shape of its wings. They rub a scraping organ on one wing against a comb-like organ on the other.Įach cricket species has distinctive noise-making structures that produce unique sounds. Run your finger down the teeth of a comb and you’ll hear an almost musical rattle. There’s a persistent myth that crickets rub their legs together to make sound. How do crickets chirp? Old-timey illustrators sidestepped this question by drawing them playing tiny violins. They don't make sound the way you think they do. Interestingly, the name for the sport of cricket has a totally different origin: it comes from an Old French word for goal post. The word cricket comes from the Old French word criquet, and refers to the cricket’s song-people once thought that those repeated chirps sounded like “criquet … criquet … criquet.” Crickets were named for the sounds they make. Here are 11 surprising (and often adorable) facts about crickets. They’re living thermometers with ears on their knees, and they just might save the world. They’re insects that invade our homes, but they’re beloved around the world.
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