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Article: How to silence a cricket.
- Article from:
- Science News for Kids
- Article date:
- September 27, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Among the things that come to mind when thinking about night are darkness, the moon, bedtime, and, in many places, chirping crickets. The list may soon get shorter in the lowlands on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where flies have targeted a type of cricket that originally came to Hawaii from the western Pacific.
Only male crickets chirp. They have special parts on their wings that, when scraped against each other, make a noise.
In the 1990s, a certain type of fly began hunting Polynesian field crickets found on Kauai, says Marlene Zuk of the University of California, Riverside.
These flies implant their babies in the bodies of crickets. The ...