- Mole crickets build a burrow that works
like a megaphone. Their song can reach 150 decibels and can be
heard over 500m away.
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- Crickets are any of the approximately
2,400 species of leaping insects of the family Gryllidae (order
Orthoptera), known for the musical chirping of the male.
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- The most common cricket songs are the
calling song, which attracts the female; the courtship, or mating,
song, which induces the female to copulate; and the fighting
chirp, which repels other males.
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- Crickets vary in length from 3 to 50
mm (0.12 to 2 inches).
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- There is a direct relationship between
the rate of cricket chirps and temperature; the rate tends to
increase with increasing temperature.
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- The field cricket (also called the
black cricket) is common in fields and yards and sometimes enters
buildings.
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Widely distributed, house and field
crickets chirp day and night.
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- Crickets are used as fish bait in some
countries and are also used in biology laboratories.
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- Ant-loving crickets (subfamily Myrmecophilinae)
are minute (3 to 5 mm long), wingless, and humpbacked. They live
in ant nests.
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- Crickets play a large role in myth
and superstition. Their presence is equated with good fortune
and intelligence; harming a cricket supposedly causes misfortune.
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- In East Asia male crickets are caged
for their songs, and cricket fighting has been a favourite sport
in China for hundreds of years.
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- Insects called crickets but not of
the cricket family Gryllidae include the camel cricket, Jerusalem
cricket, mole cricket, and pygmy sand cricket.
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