Episode Number
115
Episode Show Notes / Description
Northern mole cricket (Neocurtilla hexadactyla).
The cricket with a froglike call and body just like a mole’s.
Voice of the Wild is a podcast about wildlife and the wild sounds they make.
The following Cornell Lab | Macaulay Library recordings were used in this episode:
- Northern Mole Cricket call by Wil Hershberger (ML534520)
Sources and more:
Transcript
This is Brodie with Illinois Extension and I’m here with a new “voice of the wild”
The low tone and cadence of this call would seem to suggest “amphibian” and a muddy habitat might reinforce that perception, but these calls do not have their origins in the billowing throat of frog, in fact they’re not even made with vocal chords. They’re stridulations and they’re made by a subterranean insect; the northern mole cricket.
The mole cricket and the shrewlike mammals for which they’re named could not be further apart in the tree of life, and yet both converged on the same evolutionary solution for moving through soil; powerful scooplike front legs that dig and shovel ahead of streamlined body. Mole crickets prefer wet or sandy soil for their burrowing, so from July to September, listen for their calls in the evening around wet grasslands, damp ditches, and near the margins of ponds. Here’s the northern mole cricket again.
Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab for today’s sound. Learn more about voice of the wild at go.illinois.edu/VOW
The low tone and cadence of this call would seem to suggest “amphibian” and a muddy habitat might reinforce that perception, but these calls do not have their origins in the billowing throat of frog, in fact they’re not even made with vocal chords. They’re stridulations and they’re made by a subterranean insect; the northern mole cricket.
The mole cricket and the shrewlike mammals for which they’re named could not be further apart in the tree of life, and yet both converged on the same evolutionary solution for moving through soil; powerful scooplike front legs that dig and shovel ahead of streamlined body. Mole crickets prefer wet or sandy soil for their burrowing, so from July to September, listen for their calls in the evening around wet grasslands, damp ditches, and near the margins of ponds. Here’s the northern mole cricket again.
Thank you to the Macaulay library at the Cornell lab for today’s sound. Learn more about voice of the wild at go.illinois.edu/VOW