Cricket Mating Season Driving You Crazy? [AUDIO]
After the ‘Cricket from Hell’ woke me up at 4am chirping so loud I couldn’t get back to sleep, I decided to find out what’s up with all of this horrid noise permeating my home. Is it mating season or what?
Well, I found out that crickets mate anywhere from April through July. When you hear the chirping, that’s what is happening. ‘Bingo,’ that explains my agony and sleepless hours before dawn.
Crickets are members of the Orthopteran family, related to grasshoppers and katydids. They are considered to bring good luck when found inside your home. The mating song they chirp out by rubbing their wings and legs together is greeted as music by some and noise by others. And let me tell you it’s all noise to me!
A cricket’s chirp is created when the cricket rubs his wings or legs together during mating season. Oh great! His song is a call to the female to let her know that he is available to mate. It can also be a call to other males to let them know he is staking out his turf. When you hear a cricket chirp, it is almost always a male, although female crickets have been known to respond to the chirp of a male cricket with their own unique response chirp.
Here’s another cool cricket factoid; crickets chirp at different rates of speed depending on the temperature outdoors. It’s actually possible to calculate the temperature in Fahrenheit by counting the number of times a U.S. Snowy Tree Cricket chirps within 15 seconds and then adding the number 40. This formula is called “Dolbear’s Law.”