Driving home from somewhere last night, I (for once) didn’t have the radio on, the AC was off, and I was driving in relative quiet for most of the way home. At one point I heard a cricket loudly enough that I wondered if it might not be in the car. I cracked the window and realized that no, the crickets outside were just that loud. I couldn’t even hear other cars pass by with the windows up, but I could hear the steady throbbing, chirping noise. As I began to pay more and more attention, I realized another odd fact. There was a discernable rhythm to the chirping. And though I was driving 45mph down the road, the rhythm was constant. Apparently there is a particular type of cricket that synchronizes its nightly song with its neighbors, so that no matter how fast you drive, as long as you stay along a continuous stretch of forest or trees, you hear only the steady, monotonous throbbing chirp. Slightly eerie, but definitely a fun fact.
Crickets actually regulate their number of chirps by the temperature outside (Therefore we can tell the temperature by how many times a cricket chirps) So as long as the temperature is constants all crickets will synchronize their chirps
Left by Max on September 18th, 2005