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A comb and a scraper

How Does a Cricket Chirp?

A cricket does not chirp with its mouth. It rubs one wing against the other, like a thumbnail down a comb.

The wings rubtogether A row of ridges and ahard scraper
It is a tiny instrument, not a voice.

  1. Step 1 of 5

    One wing is a file, the other a scraper.

    1 The wings liftand open2 The hard edgedrags over theridges3 A run of clicksbecomes a chirp

    Along one wing runs a row of small ridges, like the teeth of a comb. The other wing has a hard edge. Dragging the edge across the ridges makes a burst of tiny clicks, far too fast to count.

  2. Step 2 of 5

    A thin part of the wing does the amplifying.

    Tiny clicks fromthe ridges A thin wing patchpushes the air

    The clicks alone would be almost silent. A stretched, papery patch on the wing shakes with them and pushes on far more air, exactly as a guitar's body does for its strings.

  3. Step 3 of 5

    It hears with its front legs.

    You Ears on your headA cricket Eardrums below thefront knees

    There are no ears on a cricket's head. Just below each front knee is a small patch of thin skin that shakes with sound — so a cricket points its legs to work out where a song is coming from.

  4. Step 4 of 5

    Warmth makes it chirp faster.

    Cool nightslow, spaced-outchirpsWarm nightfast, hurriedchirps

    A cricket is as warm as the air, and warm muscles work faster. So the chirps speed up on a hot night and slow right down on a cool one — you can estimate the temperature by counting them.

  5. Step 5 of 5

    Chirping is risky.

    Singing Found by a mate — andby huntersSilent Safe, and waits besidea singer

    The song is for attracting a mate, but anything else listening can find him too — including flies that lay eggs on singing crickets. So some males stay silent and quietly wait nearby instead.

    Grasshoppers make their sound a different way: they scrape a back leg against the wing, rather than rubbing two wings together.

The short version

A cricket sings by scraping a hard wing edge over a comb of ridges, and listens with eardrums in its front legs.

Try it yourself

Run a thumbnail slowly down a comb, then fast. Slow gives clicks; fast gives a note. That is the whole trick.

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