Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie
Speaker 1: Cricket Douglas. That's your your nickname these days because of
Speaker 1: your proficiency in the sport of cricket. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: my chripping. Oh you're chirping. Yes, it's summer. This is
Speaker 1: when I chirped. Yeah. I mean, you know we've talked
Speaker 1: about before. We're social creatures. We want to fall in
Speaker 1: line with what everybody seems to be doing. And if
Speaker 1: you go out on a summer night, even in a
Speaker 1: city of sprawling and is artificial in many places as Atlanta,
Speaker 1: what do you hear at now? You hear this, this
Speaker 1: constant cacophony, This just roar at times of insect life
Speaker 1: in the trees and the grass hiding underneath your house,
Speaker 1: just chirping away, cricking away, making all these crazy noises.
Speaker 1: And you know, after a while, you just give up,
Speaker 1: You fall in line, and you just start chirping at
Speaker 1: the moon, chirping at the moon, dripping at the moon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. That's what I love about summer is that
Speaker 1: does bring on that cacophony of nature. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you're like me, just grab a fresh jug of moonshine
Speaker 1: and you go out onto your porch. You really get
Speaker 1: to enjoy the sounds of nature. What you don't do that?
Speaker 1: It's the South. We're in Georgia. You don't have moonshine.
Speaker 1: Is this store about moonshine or is that are you
Speaker 1: making this in your top? It is hand crafted moonshine
Speaker 1: from my local artisan. Well that's that's the way to
Speaker 1: do it. Then, yeah, yeah, it really is making it
Speaker 1: come back by the way. Oh yeah, and it's you
Speaker 1: have like, yeah, artisan um moonshine showing up people drinking
Speaker 1: out of mason jars and all. Yeah it's quaint, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is the time to really
Speaker 1: enjoy that cacophony. And I did want to point out
Speaker 1: before we start to talk about what some of this um,
Speaker 1: these sounds of nature mean when we really eats drop
Speaker 1: in closely, I did want to point out that crickets
Speaker 1: are really huge in some parts of the world, particularly
Speaker 1: in Japan. Bob Pemberton, he's an associate with the Florida
Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History. He says that there's a rich
Speaker 1: tradition of keeping singing insects, beginning with emperors who kept
Speaker 1: them in cages in their courts, and he's sad. In fact,
Speaker 1: there is a Buddhist temple near Kyoto with a meditation
Speaker 1: room which terrariums filled with tree crickets, and the monkey
Speaker 1: was taking him through this um meditation room said that
Speaker 1: the voice of cricket is the voice of the Buddha. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting way of looking at I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: there's something very meditative about these organic sounds, about about
Speaker 1: bird song or certainly insects sounds. Um, you can you
Speaker 1: can buy CDs filled with these kind of nature sounds
Speaker 1: to help you relax. So it makes sense that before
Speaker 1: the age of New Age meditation albums, you would just
Speaker 1: stemp will simply put a handful of crickets in a
Speaker 1: cage and uh stick that in your yoga in right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well apparently to like keeping crickets is a thing in Japan,
Speaker 1: like you keep them in little cages or sometimes people
Speaker 1: will drop them into their pockets so they can enjoy
Speaker 1: the sound. Well, you know, growing up, I remember, and
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent this is like a
Speaker 1: larger thing. If this is like a Southern thing or what.
Speaker 1: But I always heard, you know, if you have a
Speaker 1: cricket in your house, it's good luck. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to kill a cricket. At most, you're supposed to let
Speaker 1: it go outside, which generally what I tried to do
Speaker 1: with insects of any kind that wander into the house.
Speaker 1: But specifically the cricket was was good luck, and it
Speaker 1: was a bad omen if you squashed it. Did you
Speaker 1: have this? I have never heard of this, never heard
Speaker 1: of it ever. So not a Michigan thing. It's not
Speaker 1: a Michigan thing. I mean, the only reference point I
Speaker 1: have two crickets is my great uncle Louis mcgulley, who
Speaker 1: used to cheap what was that last name, mcgulley from Chicologo,
Speaker 1: who would keep a cricket in his pocket. But I
Speaker 1: think he did that more as like just some sort
Speaker 1: of parlor truck, like a real cricket. Or is this
Speaker 1: like code for a handgun? A good question, but but
Speaker 1: we'll go with a real crick He assuming he had
Speaker 1: a real cricket, he kept a real cricket in his
Speaker 1: pocket at all times. He did we defeat it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just heard stories of us, and I
Speaker 1: almostly mean that he replaced this cricket well quite often,
Speaker 1: you'd want otherwise would just be heartbroking breaking to have
Speaker 1: care that that cricket around with you all the time.
Speaker 1: I should also point out, I'm of course talking about
Speaker 1: the cute little black cricket and not the grotesque um
Speaker 1: geeger esque humpback cricket camel cricket. That's funny, said, I
Speaker 1: was about to say ena more. Yeah, because those those
Speaker 1: are the ones that did generally live under the house
Speaker 1: and then creep up into the surface world to gross
Speaker 1: you out, or if you're a cat, enthrall you with
Speaker 1: your jumping ability. Cats love them at them and I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're full protein as well, it's true. Um, So
Speaker 1: shall we lean in close and with the aid of
Speaker 1: entomologists really eavesdrop on that comphony of nature? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: to us it's cacophony. To it it were it at most,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a serene musical performance that we that
Speaker 1: we just kind of take in. But really what we
Speaker 1: are hearing is acid communication in the insect and interact
Speaker 1: need world. Um, mostly insect that we're hearing all of
Speaker 1: the communications is going on at once. We can't understand it.
Speaker 1: We don't know what they're talking about. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: unless you study it. And we're gonna talk about some
Speaker 1: of those studies here shortly. But but yeah, when you
Speaker 1: start breaking it down, uh, these are actual communications. Uh.
Speaker 1: Species talking to like species. Uh species warning enemies to
Speaker 1: stay away from them. Species trying to confuse enemies. Uh.
Speaker 1: Species trying to draw prey into their grasps uh species
Speaker 1: or particular suitors trying to deal with rival suitors or
Speaker 1: attractive may There's all sorts of stuff going on. Just
Speaker 1: imagine like a million different emails or phone calls just
Speaker 1: zipping through the sky invisible. And that's what's going on
Speaker 1: in the insects song world. And there's no better insect
Speaker 1: to start off with than cicadas, which we have covered before.
Speaker 1: We talked about a cicadas and and that throng, that
Speaker 1: humming that you hear in the trees that used to
Speaker 1: to me sonify like the hottest parts of the summer
Speaker 1: and decaying in death. But now now I look at
Speaker 1: this song, is is this really actually beautiful symphony that
Speaker 1: we're putting together. Well, let's hear a quick clip from
Speaker 1: it from the Song of the Cicada U copyright Whenever
Speaker 1: cicadas decided to cross of the ground originally, Uh, here
Speaker 1: we go. Now, I agree with you that for me,
Speaker 1: the sound of the cicadas, it's always just been a
Speaker 1: part of a hot summer, just sweltering out and the
Speaker 1: and the trees the forest around you are just throbbing
Speaker 1: in the same way that the heat is throbbing. And
Speaker 1: in the cyclical nature of the brood emergence. Also, it's
Speaker 1: impossible not to to correlate that with with cycles of
Speaker 1: life and death, you know, especially as the broods vanished
Speaker 1: the cicada song vanishes, other things in your life may
Speaker 1: van sure change as well, and then the cicada has
Speaker 1: come back, and uh, and then there is something kind
Speaker 1: of magical about that. Well, especially if you consider that
Speaker 1: that brood is either thirteen years in the making or
Speaker 1: seventeen years in making, you know, seventeen years underground. And
Speaker 1: then they come out and they sing their very white
Speaker 1: love songs that the males do to the ladies out there,
Speaker 1: and they really do exist just to to reproduce and
Speaker 1: die off. Yeah, And of course, as we discussed in
Speaker 1: our we we didn't eos about cicada's a while back,
Speaker 1: which people can can look up, but they sort of
Speaker 1: an important purpose. You have all these nutrients that are
Speaker 1: locked away in the ground when they're just when they
Speaker 1: when they when they haven't emerged yet, and when they emerge,
Speaker 1: they're bringing all those nutrients out into the world. So
Speaker 1: it's feast day as well for birds, humans, even cats
Speaker 1: of course, anybody who wants to get in on the
Speaker 1: feast of the cicada. Yeah. You know, what's so fascinating
Speaker 1: about that is that they're not quite sure how cicadas
Speaker 1: are cued to come out after seventeen years. They think
Speaker 1: it's weather related, but still it's a bit of a mystery.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that there are some cicadas that
Speaker 1: don't get the cue and they crawl out like a
Speaker 1: year later, and there's like that lone cicada just you know,
Speaker 1: that lonely little chirping. Yeah, we know, all right. There's
Speaker 1: something like sadly poetic about like the one hippie cicada
Speaker 1: showing up a would stock the year after, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: saying hello, any ladies out there, and literally it's crickets.
Speaker 1: So um. Mainly it is the males, of course making
Speaker 1: the sound. It's worth noting that females can it can
Speaker 1: also make sounds as well, though it's not the signature
Speaker 1: sound that we've heard, and they often all make a
Speaker 1: slightly different sound when they're warning you, hey, don't pick
Speaker 1: me up, um, don't stick me in your pocket. That's
Speaker 1: a different sound as well. Yeah. David Rothenberg, he is
Speaker 1: an interspecies musician. He actually talks about this about the
Speaker 1: very specific noises that they make, the song that they make,
Speaker 1: and he says that whenever you hear a summer convergence
Speaker 1: of Scatta's, you're really hearing nine separate sounds made by
Speaker 1: three related species and they're all there at the same time.
Speaker 1: And so you've got something called the magic Cicada cass
Speaker 1: and i and that makes that swump swelling sound that
Speaker 1: you kind of hear, and to me, that's the most
Speaker 1: prominent sound um that you just hear that swell and
Speaker 1: it just sounds like something is about to burst. And
Speaker 1: then there's the Magicada semendicular and that's another species that
Speaker 1: makes more of a percussive sound. And then the third
Speaker 1: species is magic Cicada sept in sennial and this sounds
Speaker 1: like Pharaoh like saying it's like fair, fair crow. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's really cool because this is a three part process,
Speaker 1: this mating call. That first sound, that that squoshing sound,
Speaker 1: and this this whole process is just sort of attracting
Speaker 1: the ladies and saying I'm right here, and the closer
Speaker 1: they get together, the more the sounds change. And the
Speaker 1: cool thing is that in these pauses between these sounds,
Speaker 1: the female just flicks her wing as a way to
Speaker 1: say here I am. Yeah, so that's kind of her
Speaker 1: call in response. Of course, how how is this signature
Speaker 1: male sound made? Um, the female sound that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: that's just made by flicking their wings together. But the
Speaker 1: males use a membrane and we call this membrane the
Speaker 1: timble and really the best way and it's it's like
Speaker 1: an on their abdomen. And in terms of describing what
Speaker 1: the material looks like and how it generates the sound,
Speaker 1: the best real world uh, well not real world, but
Speaker 1: let's say artificial human world. Um uh. Analog that we
Speaker 1: have is the bindy straw, you know, the bindy part
Speaker 1: of the bindy straw, and it makes that signature noise
Speaker 1: that is essentially what's going on, right, because the abdomen
Speaker 1: is more like that accordion part that's air filled this
Speaker 1: air filled sack, and then the tembles aren't either side,
Speaker 1: and then you have these series of three to five
Speaker 1: kings that excite a residence in the abdomen and that's
Speaker 1: radiated as sound through the insects ear drums. This is
Speaker 1: so cool that's located at the bottom of the abdomen.
Speaker 1: The insects ear drums are at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: abdomen um, so that creates this huge sound pressure that
Speaker 1: acts as a sound converter, and then you have a
Speaker 1: sound that is one hundred and eight decibels loud at
Speaker 1: a one meter range. So just to give you guys
Speaker 1: a little context up there, um, an alarm clock is
Speaker 1: eighty decibles, a rock concert is a hundred and ten decibles,
Speaker 1: in a thundercloup is a hundred and twenty decibles. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that too, that the the cicadas actually tuned down
Speaker 1: their own hearing via muscles to ensure that they're not
Speaker 1: deafened by their own noises. Right. It's it's so if
Speaker 1: you ever think what these guys are loud, that they
Speaker 1: know it too, that's why they're having to tune down
Speaker 1: to sing these songs. Um. So this year's World Science Festival,
Speaker 1: they had a presentation titled the Cicada Serenades, Music, Mating
Speaker 1: and Meaning and it was really good stuff. Um. It
Speaker 1: was quite an adventure to get there because we had
Speaker 1: to go all the way from Manhattan to to the
Speaker 1: Bronx to the Botanical Garden there and we have like
Speaker 1: an hour to do it. And it turns out and
Speaker 1: New Yorkers may laugh at me for even thinking that
Speaker 1: that was a reasonable amount of time to get all
Speaker 1: the way up to the Bronx. Uh, we barely made it.
Speaker 1: But but they they they they presented a really fascinating
Speaker 1: presentation on cicada song and insects song. Rothenburger we mentioned
Speaker 1: was there another individual we're gonna mention in a minute,
Speaker 1: was there as well. One thing that they pointed out
Speaker 1: is that we we don't really understand why some male
Speaker 1: cicadas get lucky and others don't because they're all singing
Speaker 1: this this, this song and uh, a number of you know,
Speaker 1: countless other species out there in the world. We know
Speaker 1: that they're mating. Display is like saying, hey, ladies, this
Speaker 1: is what I have to offer, and the ladies go
Speaker 1: which one has the best mating display, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like which which guy has the nicest car or
Speaker 1: the coolest house or the most beautiful singing voice. But
Speaker 1: but they don't seem to have any judgment along those lines,
Speaker 1: like all the skata songs are basically the same, so
Speaker 1: it remains a bit of a mystery. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: so many of them, yes, um, And so you gotta wonder,
Speaker 1: is this just a matter of proximity, you know, where
Speaker 1: there are that many of them where it's just like, hey,
Speaker 1: we have x amount of days here, it's team on us,
Speaker 1: like ten days. We need to go ahead and do
Speaker 1: that because we're going to be like dust. Pretty well.
Speaker 1: They've been in the ground for a long time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just proximity. And there's so many of them,
Speaker 1: maybe they just realize we've we've got it figured out.
Speaker 1: There's no need to be choosy guys, let's just do it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, it's let's go back to woodstock.
Speaker 1: It's one big woodstock, like you know, converging right, alright,
Speaker 1: So let's take a quick break and when we get
Speaker 1: back we will cover crickets, of course, but also an
Speaker 1: insect that uses it's en us to make a noise
Speaker 1: of gray labnoses. Alright, so we've talked about Okay, does
Speaker 1: do you anything else to add about the cicada love songs? No,
Speaker 1: just that it's reframed my my idea of what cicadas mean.
Speaker 1: Now I think about tons of love making going on
Speaker 1: when I hear that swell as opposed to deaf and
Speaker 1: decay in the the summer storms coming on. Well, it
Speaker 1: should be obvious cicadas are not the only creatures that
Speaker 1: make make songs. Again, there are a countless varieties of
Speaker 1: insects out there in the night or in even the day,
Speaker 1: even creating all of these sounds. And we're going to
Speaker 1: mention some of the other ones that are worth noting.
Speaker 1: That's right, crickets. Okay, So a lot of people think
Speaker 1: that crickets just rub their legs to make their iconic noise,
Speaker 1: but they do not. Male crickets have a file on
Speaker 1: one wing and a scraper or a plectrum on the
Speaker 1: other wing. They rub the scraper with a file and
Speaker 1: then that makes that chirping noise, which turns out to
Speaker 1: be one hundred dest bulls by the way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's important you have that you mentioned the ridges too,
Speaker 1: because it's not just a matter of like, oh, let's
Speaker 1: say I've got a leg and I've got a wing
Speaker 1: or or another, you know, insects I've got, I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of legs. If you got a couple of wings,
Speaker 1: I should just rub all this stuff together and see
Speaker 1: what happens. Uh No, it's it's much more deliberate than that.
Speaker 1: There is one ridge moves against another ridge, and that
Speaker 1: is uh, that is what creates the noise. Yeah. And uh,
Speaker 1: I did want to point out something called mull crickets
Speaker 1: here because they sort of up the game and they
Speaker 1: use a burrow to act as an acoustic device and
Speaker 1: then radiate sound much like you would with a megaphone.
Speaker 1: So they basically make their own amphitheater for their performance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when I say megaphone, that really that's way too
Speaker 1: simple of an explanation because really they're they're acoustic setup
Speaker 1: is far more nuanced and complex than that. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: occasionally you do encounter insects that accidentally benefit from acoustic residents. Um,
Speaker 1: if you have have anyone who's ever had a bug getting
Speaker 1: your ear. I think there's a app Also there's proximity
Speaker 1: to the noise that's going on there as well. But
Speaker 1: there they have their own amphitheater. And uh once I
Speaker 1: had a click bug crawl into a picture frame. So
Speaker 1: it was in there and like just the right spot,
Speaker 1: and it was exceedingly loud. It took me for every
Speaker 1: to figure out what it was. I thought there was
Speaker 1: like somebody in the wall tapping on something click the bug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a click click beetle type thing. Okay, pop, you know,
Speaker 1: and if they have something to pop against and then
Speaker 1: if that can resonate, then it becomes this whole different performance.
Speaker 1: It's true, and it is a performance. Uh. For instance,
Speaker 1: grasshoppers like the cricket, they use this what's called stride
Speaker 1: stride eulation that's the scraper, and they used the scraper
Speaker 1: on these little pegs on their hind legs. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: kind of reminded me again of moon shine and making
Speaker 1: music and you know, using a washboard to make some
Speaker 1: sort of sound. Like I am instantly imagining like grasshoppers
Speaker 1: in crickets all setting around playing like string instruments and
Speaker 1: playing the jug maybe and drinking menshine to the point
Speaker 1: where I must have seen that somewhere. Maybe that exists,
Speaker 1: probably in a Pixar movie or it should be. But
Speaker 1: to your point, a lot of people don't realize that
Speaker 1: crickets and grasshoppers are making their their sounds via completely
Speaker 1: different methods. Yeah, and and speaking of completely different methods,
Speaker 1: what if this guy showed up to the cricket and
Speaker 1: grasshopper party. Um, this is called the micronecta Scholtzi, also
Speaker 1: known as the singing penis. It is a freshwater insect
Speaker 1: and it measures just two millimeters across. It's common across Europe,
Speaker 1: so maybe some of our European listeners will will know
Speaker 1: about the singing penis. And now this is not a
Speaker 1: singing penis in the in line with Steve Martin sketch
Speaker 1: if you remember this, uh, I think it was a
Speaker 1: Saturday Night live bit that he did. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He would he would end sip his pants and there's
Speaker 1: a microphone and it's like singing, and then he would
Speaker 1: actually he would smoke a cigarette with it as well.
Speaker 1: That was part of the act. Was it kind of
Speaker 1: like a ventriloquist act? Yeah, it was kind of supposed
Speaker 1: to be like that, like like he was very um, dignified.
Speaker 1: It was very much in the style of let's say,
Speaker 1: the fartist that we've talked about before, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure was Saturday Nightlife Skin. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's on YouTube somewhere. Um, but but that is not
Speaker 1: what's happening here. With the penis. We're seeing another example
Speaker 1: of this stridulation that we've been talking about again. It's
Speaker 1: one it's one part of the body rubbing against the other. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean really, when you hear all that noise in
Speaker 1: the in the the insects song in the forest, you're
Speaker 1: just hearing a great rubbing of parts, It's true. And
Speaker 1: in this part is it is the penis part, and
Speaker 1: it's a ridge on our penis, which then is rubbed
Speaker 1: against a ridge on the surface of their abdomen. And
Speaker 1: this is so trippy. The surface area is roughly the
Speaker 1: width of a human hair, and it is producing a
Speaker 1: noise of like two decibels. This is incredibly loud. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is like the equivalent of listening to a loud
Speaker 1: orchestra play if you're in the front row. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: just a freight train barreling by now Luckily, these guys
Speaker 1: live in the water, so of the sound is muffled
Speaker 1: by their by their natural habitat, but you can but
Speaker 1: they're still pretty loud out if you're walking by and
Speaker 1: they're they're in the water. And these guys are pretty
Speaker 1: common throughout Europe, I believe. Yeah, yeah they are. And
Speaker 1: uh so that of course leads us to a really
Speaker 1: wily insect, and this is the tiger mom Yeah. These
Speaker 1: other insects we've been talking about, they're largely talking to
Speaker 1: each other. It's largely a matter of mating or occasionally,
Speaker 1: as with this Kida's saying, get your hands off of
Speaker 1: me and put me back in that tree so I
Speaker 1: can do it. Um. But in this case, the tiger
Speaker 1: moth is doing doing something a lot more subtle and
Speaker 1: a lot more fascinating. Yeah, I mean, because it's talking
Speaker 1: to another species. Uh specifically it's predator, a bat, and
Speaker 1: it is making its little song. They think, our researchers think, uh,
Speaker 1: it could be one of three theories. One is that
Speaker 1: it's saying, hey, guess what, I'm poisonous. You probably don't
Speaker 1: know this at night because you can't see any but
Speaker 1: other people these daytime people they know that this these
Speaker 1: markings on my wings, they indicate that I'm poisonous. But
Speaker 1: since it's evening and you can't see this glorious pattern
Speaker 1: on my wings, I'm just gonna tell you. So they
Speaker 1: think that that could be one reason, uh for the
Speaker 1: noise it makes. The second theory is that it's could
Speaker 1: be jamming the bats sonar m. And then the third
Speaker 1: theory is that it's kind of saying boo to the
Speaker 1: bat um and in a sort of acoustic warning system,
Speaker 1: I know you're here. Yeah, Like you know, the bat's
Speaker 1: kind of honing in, hunting in and then or homing
Speaker 1: in and it says, oh, hey, I'm here, and then
Speaker 1: the bat kind of gets freaked out. And this is
Speaker 1: called a startle response. And this is something that Ron
Speaker 1: Hoy talks about um in some of his papers. He
Speaker 1: was on the panels NY. He was on the panel.
Speaker 1: He was great because he brought a number of acoustic
Speaker 1: instruments with him, because I mean you also had David Rothenberg,
Speaker 1: who again he is amazing. He's a philosopher, a musician
Speaker 1: and author um in New Jersey, I believe, and he
Speaker 1: um he's all about like taking natural sounds in the
Speaker 1: world things, sounds of insects, the sounds of whales, and
Speaker 1: the doing of his own stuff. So he actually had
Speaker 1: a container or of cicadas. He has taken him out,
Speaker 1: sticking him on the microphone, and then he's playing like
Speaker 1: an alto sacks. And then he had this fabulous percussionists
Speaker 1: there that was doing kind of um my, my musical
Speaker 1: knowledge isn't sufficient enough to describe it, but very um
Speaker 1: this guy's percussion would not have been out of place
Speaker 1: in a yoga studio or or or it's some sort
Speaker 1: of tribal kind of performance. So it was it was
Speaker 1: a very very cool little little gig you put together there.
Speaker 1: But then yeah, Hoy brought all these different woodwind instruments,
Speaker 1: not woodwind, um would percussion instruments to to demonstrate the
Speaker 1: different forms of stridulation that go on with these different insects. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you can kind of get the idea of the
Speaker 1: frequency or the length. Yeah. So by the end of
Speaker 1: it you had Rothenberg performing and then Hoy had passed
Speaker 1: out all of his his toys to the other panelists
Speaker 1: and they were all strumming or or or shaking or
Speaker 1: rubbing sticks together to make the kind of jam with
Speaker 1: the insects again the woods suck just came out? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: with the insects comes out would suck. Um. What I
Speaker 1: like about David Rothenberg is that he has described as
Speaker 1: an interspecies musician and there's actually a great radio lab
Speaker 1: with him, and it's talking more specifically about Cicada's but
Speaker 1: also about some of his work with the clarinet in
Speaker 1: whales in this sort of column response that happens between
Speaker 1: him and whales when he's playing the clarinets really interesting.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. It's just an insight into
Speaker 1: some of the sounds going on out there. Certainly not
Speaker 1: all of them, and there are a number of other
Speaker 1: creatures that that have some really interesting sounds going on.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting the mosquitoes when they will twining. You
Speaker 1: heard those of the lady mosquitoes, uh talking and and
Speaker 1: potentially trying to mate as well with their insects. Song
Speaker 1: jumping spiders have some phenomenal singing dancing routines that they
Speaker 1: do that we can't hear with with our with our
Speaker 1: ears without the actually uh you know, amplifying the sound,
Speaker 1: but it's still fascinating. Be sure to look up some
Speaker 1: videos of that if you haven't seen it. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully everyone will think a little a little bit differently
Speaker 1: about the insect a company in the night, because it's
Speaker 1: it's not just a background noise, you know, it is,
Speaker 1: it's this massive communication and uh. And that the sounds
Speaker 1: are being produced at a very small level, uh, with
Speaker 1: some with some really interesting instruments. Indeed, and if you
Speaker 1: want to check out some more insect sounds, go to
Speaker 1: BBC's program called Nature in the episode is called Insect
Speaker 1: Soundings and you can get some more clips of various
Speaker 1: other insects and their role in nature. Uh. If you
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Speaker 1: you'd like to talk about what the cada sound sounds
Speaker 1: mean to you, what insect sounds mean to you? What
Speaker 1: what is your relationship with crickets? Did you grow up
Speaker 1: hearing that they were good luck and them in your house?
Speaker 1: Do you keep them a little cages? Do you keep
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