Fact or Fiction?

A chirping cricket can tell you the temperature

• NWF Staff
• Jan 04, 2010

Danged if it isn’t a fact. Crickets make good thermometers, because the hotter the weather, the faster they chirp. Heat raises a cricket’s metabolism and loosens up its joints, so it can rub together its noise-making legs faster. In most species, males chirp to attract mates and repel males. The male snowy tree cricket, common throughout the United States, tracks temperatures so consistently that if you count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and add 39, you can come up with the surrounding temperature within 1 degree F of accuracy. On the more aesthetic side, people in some Asian cultures enjoy the chirp for its beauty and consider it the sound of a happy home.