How do insect detect or hear these sounds? Crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and cicadas all possess hearing organs called tympanum. Predation - you let everyone know where you are! A male insect may sing in order to let other males know that an area is his territory. Some insects use sound to mark their territory.

Often, insect will make noise when they are disturbed - this may be to scare off the predator or to warn other insects of danger. Usually, the male's song attracts the female. Most often, insects produce sounds to attract mates. Why do insects make sound? Insects often use sound to communicate with each other. The death's head sphinx moth expels air to make a whistling sound. Some cockroaches make a hissing sound by ejecting air. Forcing air through body openings - although many vertebrates use the expulsion of air to make sounds (as we do when speaking), this form of communication is fairly uncommon among insects. Other insects make sounds by vibrating their wings or other body parts.Ĥ. Tymbals are membranes located on the abdomen that are moved by muscles. Vibrating membranes - cicadas, which make very distinctive sounds vibrate tymbals. Strike a part of the body against a surface - deathwatch beetles tap their heads, cockroaches and some stoneflies tap the tip of their abdomen, and some grasshoppers tap their feet against a substrate to make noises.ģ. Show examples, short-horned grasshoppers, long-horned grasshoppers, bess beetlesĢ. The most well known insects that use stridulation to produce sound are the crickets (rub their wings together) and grasshoppers (rub legs or leg and wing), but some ants, wasps, and beetles also use stridulation. Some rub their legs and their wings, while others rub their legs against their head or their wings against their body.

Some insects rub their wings together, others rub different segments of their abdomen. Stridulation - this is the moving of one body part against another. There are many different ways that insect produce sound.ġ. Today we will learn about how insects communicate through sound production. Ask the students the following questions - How do humans communicate? Can insect talk? How do you think insects communicate? One important aspect of behavior is communication, which is widespread among animals.

Cricket sounds