music; ambience katydid chorus
“We’ve had lots of rain in Texas this year, and so there’s been a huge crop of katydids, which produce an incredibly loud noise at night. So I’ve been out measuring their sound with a sound level meter. And they really are noisy at night. Some people are complaining they can’t sleep.”
Well, if the katydids were keeping you up at night, wait ’til you see what the morning has in store. Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Citizen scientist Forrest Mims investigates all sorts of natural phenomena, including the nocturnal sounds of katydids and the daytime choruses of other insects.
“And now the cicadas have come out. And so you can hear this one I picked up on the porch of my office. The cicadas in the daytime are about the same sound level as the katydids at night. They drown out the crickets and the frogs, so it will be good for those creatures when these guys are all gone.”
Forrest Mims wanted to find out how loud a chorus of katydids really was.
“And it’s actually not quite as loud as it sounds. But anywhere between 68 and 74 decibels, at least from the ground, when these katydids are up in the trees. That’s about as loud as a T-38 jet from a mile away, or a vacuum cleaner from 6 feet away. So it’s reasonably loud. And what’s interesting is when both of these creatures are sounding off at the same time, it really is quite loud outside. And the cicada produces sound with built-in organs on its side, whereas the katydid rubs its wings together.”
For more information about Forrest Mims’ research, check out his blog on pulseplanet.com.
Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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