CRICKET FACTS
- A field cricket is shiny black, with brown wings.
- A fully-grown male is less than an inch long, while the female cricket is about 50 percent longer.
- Only male crickets can sing.
- Crickets, unlike grasshoppers, are short and stubby, and won’t jump, except in desperation.
- Female crickets lay their eggs in the fall. When they hatch in May or early June there are thousands of tiny black crickets, but by July they are bigger and large enough to start singing.
- To sing, male crickets lift their wing casings at a 45 degree angle and rub them together.
- Crickets can eat and sing at the same time.
- Like all insects, crickets are cold-blooded and they sing faster or slower depending on the temperature.
Did you know? To convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count number of chirps in 14 seconds then add 40 to get temperature.
Example: 30 chirps + 40 = 70° F
