Animals Have Their Own ‘Dialects’: Beijing Ground Crickets Sing Love Songs to Attract Mates, Henan Mole Crickets’ Girls Don’t Understand

Mole crickets, also known as ground crickets, are agricultural pests that burrow underground.

Mole crickets mainly active at night, and you often hear a buzzing sound, which is entirely the chorus of male mole crickets, because only their wings can create the sound when rubbing against each other. In fact, they are singing love songs to attract female mole crickets for rendezvous and procreation.

Shy and modest female mole crickets are often moved by these moving songs and then slowly crawl to the side of male mole crickets. Of course, the only consequence of their love is that the number of mole crickets in a local area increases, further harming crops.

Chinese entomologists have recently experimented with sound-attraction methods to eliminate mole crickets, using sensitive recorders to first record the love songs sung by male mole crickets, and then play them in large volumes in the fields at night when needed. Under the influence of this majestic and passionate song, female mole crickets indeed rushed towards the recorder in groups. This is obviously very convenient and easy for humans to eliminate them, and crops are also protected.

However, when entomologists broadcast mole cricket love songs across different regions, they discovered a new problem: the number of ‘listeners’ varies from place to place.

For example, when the song of the Beijing mole cricket boy was played on a cassette tape in Beijing, it deeply pleased the female mole crickets and they rushed to listen, but if it was played in Henan, it didn't get the favor of the local mole cricket girls. It turned out that the girls there didn't understand or like the songs of the Beijing mole cricket boy, but were interested in the songs sung by the Henan mole cricket boy.