Cricket

insects · musical bugs · backyard

Built-in fiddle. Male crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together, not their legs! It's a way to call to other crickets.

Jumpy relatives. Crickets are related to bush crickets and, more distantly, to grasshoppers, all famous hoppers.

Tricky family tree. Scientists today group true crickets in a superfamily called Grylloidea, sorting out who's related to whom.

Cousins everywhere. The cricket name is also used for distant cousins like king crickets and mole crickets, which dig underground.