Heat waves are pushing temperatures up this summer and breaking records across the world. It’s affecting people, crops and crickets. The cold-blooded insects chirp faster as temperatures rise.

The steady sound of crickets chirping in the evening is a staple of a midwest summer. And with some simple math that chirping can be utilized to tell the temperature. Counting the number of cricket ...

In the late 1800s, more than a hundred years before smartphones and weather apps, a physicist discovered you could step outside on a summer night, listen carefully, and estimate the temperature with ...

Have you ever read the book “The Very Quiet Cricket?” It’s about a young cricket who can’t chirp until he grows up. My friend Rich Zack reminded me of that book when we talked about your question.

Top Image credit:European Journal of Entomology 100 (2003): 581-86. We live on a planet thrumming with the diverse voices of communicative animals. But it was not always this way. For more than 90 ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: This was first published in August 2018. MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) --Starting in late July, Minnesotans started to hear summer symphonies from insects. Some say it feels like summer, while ...

Insects communicate in lots of different ways, for many reasons. Some, such as butterflies and beetles, use color, patterns and other visual cues to attract mates or warn potential predators that they ...

The sound of crickets chirping often sets the ideal summer nighttime scene. While it might not be exactly pleasant to imagine countless crickets nearby, rubbing their body parts together to create a ...

Crickets chirp faster when it’s hotter outside, according to an old scientific observation. As parts of the world experience record-breaking heat, they’ll be especially busy this summer. A chorus of ...