Brian Henderson, age 11, of Kingston, Ontario, Canada, for his question:
How do grasshoppers communicate?
Some experts claim that grasshoppers sing to warn hungry relatives away from their greenery. But all agree that their most important communications are love songs. Some make music by rubbing their, wings together, others by rubbing their wings and back legs. Some of the females also chirp, though more softly.
Hundreds of these insect species are classed in two main groups. The short horned grasshoppers include the various locusts that chirp and crackle through the hottest summer days. The long horned grasshopper includes the numerous crickets and katydids. The horns refer to antennas, which are either rather short or long enough to stream back beyond the insect's tail.
All of them are large blocky insects and most have mighty thighs for taking super leaps. They belong to an insect order named Orthoptera meaning "straight wings." This refers to the front pair of stiff straight wings usually folded along their backs. Under them is a pair of gauzy flying wings, usually folded up like neat fans.
Most of these straight winged insects have built in fiddles of some kind, and each species creates his personal music. An expert with keen ears can recognize dozens of different species from their songs. Most of the short horned grasshoppers communicate in crackly sputters by rubbing together their front wings and back legs. Some also crackle as they fly by rattling their front and back wings together.
In most short horns, the musical instrument is a pair of files and a pair of scrapers. In some species, the hard rough files are on the front wings and the raspy scrapers are on the back legs. In other species, the scrapers are on the wings and the files on the legs. Chirpy communications occur when the two rough patches are rubbed together.
The male short horned grasshopper does most of the communication, though the female can reply rather softly. Both have hearing organs on their abdomens, one behind where each of the long strong back legs joins the body.
The long horned grasshoppers wear their two part musical instruments on their wings and most of them are capable of more elaborate communications. Along the inside edges of the hard front wings there is one scraper and one groovy file. When the two edges are rubbed together they produce a variety of notes and rhythms. The long horns do their communicating at night and sometimes on cloudy days. Their ears are located, of all places, just above the knee joints of their front legs.
Even the creakiest grasshopper songs convey a cheerful sound to our ears. One of the best singers is the leafy green, long horned katydid. He, of course, is the talented musician who chirps "Katy did, Katy didn't, Katy did" from the shadowy foliage by the light of the golden moon.