Comments on: the forest and the trees

Question: the forest and the trees

klarck — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 03:51:42 -0800

I hear Crickets

I was woken at about 4:30 this morning. Before returning to sleep I listened to the crickets outside for a while. Against a slow, rhythmic backdrop of dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of crickets that slowly changed from zzzz zzzz zzzz zzzz to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and back, I could always isolate 1, sometimes 2, soloists letting out individual chirps. The soloists seemed to take turns on center stage, stepping out then fading back into the background.

Is there cricket orchestration? Does some primitive cognition only allow me to count 1, 2 or many crickets? (Do others hear crickets the same way?)

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 04:27:28 -0800

First, consider that they are not all equidistant from you, and the "soloists" are probably just those close enough to sound louder. Second, consider that there are probably a dozen or so that sound that loud. If you were a hundred yards away, you'd have a different set of soloists, and the set you have now would be background. The crickets probably do their cricking in bursts, then wait for a response. So yes, they are in a sense taking center stage, but so are all the other crickets. The ones not close to you just blend into a background.

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:02:29 -0800

Consider, all such sounds are not from crickets. Sometimes they're frogs. And probably other kinds of insects.

By: 517

517 — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:25:03 -0800

A recording of cicadas at 72 deg. F. (wav)

A recording at 93 deg. F. (wav)

By: rtimmel

rtimmel — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 08:05:05 -0800

I have always wondered the same thing. If you can get into the middle of a field of crickets it does souns as if there are distinct rythmic variations in the various crickets' song that travels acrross the field. I'ce always wondered if this was some sort of "hive mind" sort of communication.

On the other hand. the human mind is incrediably good, perhaps too good, at imposing order and patterns onto chaos. See for example here or here. So who knows.

By: lunkfish

lunkfish — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 08:19:45 -0800

The crickets are probably competing in some way for crickettes attention - that gives it some kind of structure.

By: duck

duck — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 09:23:25 -0800

Crickets and other such bugs are synchronized.

Duncan Watts, now a sociologist previously a physicist and mathematician, became interested in the research on networks as a way of understanding how crickets (and other biological things that synchronize, like heart cells) synchronized in the absence of some centralized control. This was part of his physics dissertation research before he moved on to sociology.

By: ktrey

ktrey — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 10:34:38 -0800

Your profile indicates that you are in the US. A useful page for identifying the different types of "musical" insects is here.

By: crickets

crickets — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 11:47:54 -0800

If it bothers you I'll stop.