Insect Diary describes the appearance of insects

Write about crickets

Cricket's residence and eggs

Cricket is a well-known insect that people are familiar with. It lives in the grass, and its song and shelter are quite distinctive. The fable master La Fontaine once described and praised it in poetry. Another fabler once said in the voice of a cricket: "How I like the place where I am deeply secluded! If you want to live a happy life, hide here!"

I once saw the cricket at the entrance of the cave with my own eyes. The tentacles are curled, the abdomen is facing the shade, and the back is facing the sun... Cricket's burrows are usually dug in the grass on sunny slopes. The advantage of this is that the rainwater outside the cave can quickly flow away from the slope without pouring directly into the cave. The passage of the cave is about a finger wide, and the entire depth is at most nine inches. Its direction is sometimes zigzag and sometimes straight, trying to adapt to the changes in the terrain. There is a tuft of grass left at the entrance of Cricket's cave. This is to protect the cave from rain and to conceal the entrance to protect the entire cave. Whenever the surroundings are quiet, they will play in the grass at the entrance of the cave.

The inside of Cricket's cave is not luxurious, but it is not rough either. At the end of the cave passage is the bedroom, which is the most spacious and smooth in comparison. The whole cave looks very simple, clean and hygienic. The cricket cherishes the shelter it has worked so hard to build. It does not move in spring or winter. Among insects, only crickets have a fixed residence and enjoy a peaceful and peaceful life alone. Crickets generally choose places with clean environment and facing the sun as their residence.

Crickets are sensitive and clever. They will hear even the slightest footsteps of people and immediately escape into their caves. But there are ways to lure it out of the cave. You can put a piece of straw into the hole and swing it for a few times. The curious bird will enter the hole and use its sensitive tentacles to test the situation, and then crawl out. This way you can catch it. But if you fail to catch it using straw as bait the first time, it will be difficult to catch it this way in the future. At this time, you can use a glass of water to wash it out. In short, the cricket's shelter is far superior to that of all other animals, except man, who excels him in the art of building dwellings.

After introducing the situation of cricket caves, now let’s take a look at how crickets lay eggs. If you want to watch crickets lay eggs, all it takes is a little patience and not much preparation. Buffon turned this patience into a genius. I think this is somewhat of an exaggeration, and it would be better to call it the most valuable quality of an observer. In April or May at the latest, we cage country crickets in pairs in pots filled with subsoil. The food given to them is lettuce leaves. To keep food fresh, change it every once in a while. To prevent crickets from escaping, cover the pot with a glass plate. With this simple device, we can obtain a lot of very meaningful information. If necessary, a cage made of high-quality metal mesh can be used as an auxiliary device. The situation in the metal cage will be introduced to you later. Now let’s observe the egg-laying process. We need to be extremely vigilant, otherwise we will miss the opportunity to witness crickets laying eggs with our own eyes.

In the first week of June, my unremitting observation work began to bear satisfactory results. I suddenly saw a female cricket standing there motionless, with her ovipositing tube vertically inserted into the In the soil. It didn't pay any attention to my impolite peeking behavior, and just stayed at one point for a long time. Finally, it pulled out its ovipositor, pulled it casually a few times, and felt away the traces of the hole. It rested for a while, then moved to another location and started inserting the ovipositor into the soil again. It inserted it here and there, and all the places that could be used to lay eggs were available on demand. After four hours, the egg laying seemed to be over, but in order to be more safe, I waited patiently for two more days. After two days, I started searching the soil for eggs. The eggs are straw yellow, about three millimeters long, and cylindrical in shape. The eggs are inserted vertically into the soil one by one, not touching each other, but very close to each other.

In order to find out how many eggs a female cricket lays each time, I used a magnifying glass to carefully observe the pile of soil for a long time. Based on the observed results, I estimated that each female cricket lays approximately fifteen or six hundred eggs. , such a large family will definitely undergo large-scale layoffs in a short period of time.

The cricket egg itself is an exquisite little mechanical system. When the larvae hatch, the egg shell is like a white tube with a very neat round hole on the top and a round cap along the edge of the hole, which becomes a lid. Instead of being blindly pushed up by a newborn or destroyed with scissors, the lid opens automatically along a specially prepared texture and its fragile lines. We should have a good understanding of this wonderful incubation process.

About two weeks after laying the eggs, two large black and red dots appear on the front end of the egg shell. This is the prototype of the eyes. Slightly forward of these two origins, that is, at the top of the cylinder, a slender micro-shaped annular washer appears. This is the fracture line in the process of being formed. Soon, through the translucent egg shell, you can see all parts of the body of the little animal inside. At this time, you should pay extra attention and increase the time and frequency of observations, especially in the morning.

Good luck always favors those who are patient. The hard work I put in finally paid off satisfactorily. After some exquisite processing, the micro-shaped gaskets have been woven into a line with very low resistance. At this time, the little life in the egg pushes it with its forehead, and the egg cover is pushed up along its periphery, and then falls aside. . The cricket came out of the egg shell, like a little monster popping out of a doll.

Crickets are born wearing a coat. But it takes off this coat at the opening of the egg shell. At this time it was all gray and white. After fighting against the mud covering its body and sweeping away obstacles, it emerged from the ground. But at this time it was still very thin, about the size of a flea. This is a challenge for its survival, but fortunately it is very agile.

I was afraid that I couldn’t take good care of these little guys, so I put them in my garden. Unexpectedly, all the crickets in my garden were wiped out by ants and other nasty insects. I had no choice but to go outside the garden to continue observing and understanding the crickets.

One day in August, I saw on a piece of grass that the little cricket had grown larger, and the white when it was born had turned into black. At this time it has no fixed abode. They are also wandering during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and are also being hunted by yellow-winged migratory locusts on the mud peaks. It wasn't until the end of the month, when the cold came, that the crickets started digging holes in our house. After the cave is dug, it will be continuously dug and maintained to make the cave more spacious and comfortable.

The Singing of Crickets

Earlier I introduced to you the residence of crickets and their egg-laying conditions. Here we talk about the singing and mating of crickets. Like other insects, crickets can also sing. The instrument for cricket singing is very simple, with a rack, a bow and a vibrating membrane.

Unlike other insects, crickets are right-handed, and their right elytra almost completely covers the left elytra. However, the structure of its two elytra is exactly the same. Both elytra are composed of a wide transparent dry membrane, which is as thin as a white onion skin and can vibrate. It is the site where crickets occur. There are two wing veins in the middle of the elytra. There is a depression between the two wing veins, and there are five or six black wrinkles in the depressed gap. These wrinkles form friction arteries, creating conditions for vibrations to occur. One of the two wing veins that is cut into a jagged shape is the bow. It has about 150 serrations, all in the shape of triangular prisms. Even better is that it knows how to cadence, adjusting the intensity of its sound as needed.

Can crickets sing when the instruments are turned upside down? The results of my experiments prove that the answer is yes. But I still won't give up. I look for the cricket larvae and watch for the moment when it sheds its skin and changes shape. At this time, only its wings and elytra were seen like tiny wrinkled sheets. One day in early May I finally saw it shed its skin and throw away its old and rough clothes. Except for the elytra and wings, which are pure white, the rest of its body is maroon. When the cricket first came out of its coat, its wings and elytra were small, wrinkled, and incomplete. But then the sheathed wings will slowly grow. Later I found that the edges of the two elytra were touching, and the right one was about to cover the elytra.

At this time, I used a piece of grass to gently change the overlapping order of the elytra, placing the left elytra next to the right elytra, and it was successful, although it sometimes didn't cooperate well. At about 3 pm that day, the cricket changed from light red to black. In this way, the cricket's elytra grew and matured under my intervention. Soon he was playing with a bow that no member of his family had ever used. And its pitch and rhythm are normal.

After talking about the cricket’s musical instrument, let’s listen to its music! Crickets always love to sing at the door of their house in the warm sunshine. At this time, its elytra make a soft trilling sound of "klickley", which is round, loud and rhythmic. It sang like this all spring without stopping. I have never heard any other insect sing such a beautiful and clear song. There are also many crickets singing at night in my garden, singing their chorus in every cluster of mountain roses and on every bouquet of lavender.

Not only that, crickets can confuse people by adjusting the intensity of their singing, causing you to hallucinate and not be able to tell where it is.

If people want to keep crickets in their own cages and watch them, that’s okay, because I have a cricket, and now it is used to life in a cage. It also sings. And its lifespan is twice as long as its companions in the wild grass. The reason is that it lives a very peaceful life and does not lose its body due to excessive consumption of happiness.

Under the box tree in front of our house, the Bordeaux cricket, the smallest of the cricket family, often sings. In the fields, there are even more members of the cricket symphony. The spring days are dominated by field crickets, and the summer nights are dominated by tree crickets (also called Italian crickets). This Italian cricket is slender and white. It lives on small shrubs or tall grass and rarely comes to the ground. It can be heard singing from July to October. The song they sing is the slow and soft "Cree Yi Yi Yi", which is very beautiful.

Male and female crickets do not live together, they both like to live in their own homes. Although the silent female cricket can hear the noise made by the male cricket and find it even if the two live far apart. According to my observations, male crickets will also find ways to find silent female crickets. Although sometimes there are dangers on their long journeys, and even death, they are not afraid or flinch.

However, even among the crickets it is not all peaceful and without struggle. They still quarrel sometimes, especially when two male crickets are together, they often fight for love. They both wear very strong helmets on their heads. They bite each other's heads or grapple together until a winner is determined. The loser slipped away, while the winner came to the female cricket's side, singing proudly. At this time, it did not forget to extend its tentacles and use saliva to beautify itself. It stamps or kicks its feet impatiently. Although its elytra were shaking, it made no sound, and it was too excited to sing. Despite this, the female cricket did not accept the opponent immediately, but ran away and hid in the grass without losing the opponent, just to test the opponent. What is the difference between this and the flirting and romantic pursuit and play between lovers in our world?