The frequencies crickets love and fear.Field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus Teleogryllus oceanicus commonly known as the Australian, Pacific or oceanic field cricket is a cricket that occurs across the Oceania and in coastal Australia from Carnarvon in Western Australia and Rockhampton in north-east Queensland. ) typically call at a frequency of 4 to 5 kilohertz One thousand cycles per second. See Hertz. (kHz), while their archenemies, bats, produce ultrasound ultrasound or sonography, in medicine, technique that uses sound waves to study and treat hard-to-reach body areas. In scanning with ultrasound, high-frequency sound waves are transmitted to the area of interest and the returning echoes recorded ranging from 25 to 80 kHz. Sounds above 16 kHz alarm crickets, giving them a wide margin of safety, Robert A. Wyttenbach of Cornell University Cornell University, mainly at Ithaca, N.Y.; with land-grant, state, and private support; coeducational; chartered 1865, opened 1868. It was named for Ezra Cornell, who donated $500,000 and a tract of land. With the help of state senator Andrew D. and his colleagues report in the Sept. 13 Science. To determine how crickets respond to sound, they exposed the animals to 20 kHz sounds, which normally cause the insects to flee. However, they repeated the sound so often that the insects' fear disappeared. Other studies have shown that only a novel sound will reinstate To restore to a condition that has terminated or been lost; to reestablish. To reinstate a case, for example, means to restore it to the same position it had before dismissal. a cricket's normal response. The team tested the animals with a variety of frequencies and found that sounds below 16 kHz did the trick. Sounds above 16 kHz were too similar to 20 kHz for the crickets to discriminate. This suggests that crickets, like other animals, hear only broad categories of frequencies, although sound, like color, varies continuously. |
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