Creatures Heard But Rarely Seen:
Crickets and Katydids
C
By Frances Boyd
rickets and katydids are a
more interesting group of
insects than most people
realize. Belonging to
different families within the Orthoptera
order of insects, they are much more
charming than their cousins, the locust
and grasshopper.
Charm aside, these small creatures
are a necessary part of the food chain
on Kiawah. Birds, frogs, lizards, and
other animals eat katydids and crickets
high up in the trees or on the ground.
Some residents, who desire perfect
turf, try to kill them. Others buy them
for bait. Believe it or not, a number
of individuals in the United States
are researching the protein benefit
of ground crickets (already food in
many parts of the world) for human
consumption. Still other people in the
broader scientific world make it their
profession to analyze and record
cricket sounds.
Crickets and katydids contribute
significantly to the music of a Kiawah
summer night and they do it with a
Southern accent. Their songs have been
coded specific to type and gender of
insect, as well as the part of the country
in which each insect is found, hence
the Southern accent. Cricket songs are
more musical to the human ear because
their sounds are relatively pure and low.
Katydids sound buzzy or raspy because
their frequencies are higher.
One can purchase CDs of night
noises, considered to be very Zen and
meditative, in order to re-live days
of camping out under the stars or
swinging in a hammock on a night
porch. If you are a typical Kiawah
resident, you have heard these insect
choruses simply by walking outside
on a summer night. Sometimes the
frogs join in, and it is hard to tell the
altos from the so