Dean Edwards, Age 11, Of Rockingham, N.C.., for his question:
How does a cricket sing?
The cricket choir sings its best after sundown on a warm spring or summer evening. The weather has a lot t0 do with their cheerful music, and some people claim that a cricket can inform you of the temperature. If he chirps 80 times a minute, the balmy evening is 60 degrees. If he chirps 160 times a minute, the air is a sultry 80 degrees.
The crickets are not the only insects that chirp through the summer evenings. The katydids, the grasshoppers and sometimes the locusts may be members of the cheerful choir. These insects belong to different families, but their families are related. They are classified with 18,000 species of straight winged insects in the order orthoptera.
Most insects of this order have two pairs of wings. The gauzy hind wings are often pleated like delicate fans and folded away under the sturdy front wings. The order gets its name from the stiff, straight front wings which fold over the back and hind wings of these insects.
Some crickets have no wings. They cannot join the cheerful choir, because a cricket makes music with his front wings. When at rest, the right front wing crosses over the left. The cricket's musical instrument is at the point where the inside edge of the right wing crosses over the left wing. Herc the sharp edge of each wing forms a small, hard scraper. Behind each scraper is a file formed from a hard, raised vein which is crossed with small ridges.
A cheerful chirp is heard when the cricket rubs the scraper of one wing across the file of the opposite wing.
The musical instrument of the katydid is very much like that of the cricket. But the katydid sings by partly opening and then closing his front wings. His gauzy back wings act as a sounding board to give us the musical katy did, katy did and sometimes a note that sounds like katy didn't.
The grasshopper and his cousins are the jumping champions of the order orthoptera. He has long, strong back legs, and his sturdy front wings are ridged with hard veins. He makes his cheerful music by rubbing his back legs against his hard, grooved wings.
If you listen closely, you can detect the different singers in the cricket choir. You may hear the big, brown field cricket and the small, green field cricket, and high in the balcony, you will hear the tree cricket chirping from the branches. Some of the katydids also sing from the trees, and some of them join the cricket chorus on the grassy ground.