Singing Insect Pets

In different areas of the world it was not uncommon for royalty or Buddhist monks to keep singing pets. The Chinese used to put them in golden cages or fancy intricate boxes made of bamboo or wood.

The singing insects are crickets and katydid's, and cicadas. The crickets and katydid's fill the night air with their song, but the cicadas sing at night.

The sounds they make are their way of sending messages to each other for courtship and territorial rights.

The crickets belong to the Orthoptera species, known as the canaries of the insect world. This group includes grasshoppers and locust, walkingsticks and mantids.

The cicadas, are members of the Homoptera species, that is known by its piercing sucking mouthparts and membranous wings held like a roof over their back.

They make music by rubbing their forewings together or by scraping their hind legs against their forewings or abdomens.

The musical song is pleasent to the human ear for the frequencies are pure and low for the crickets. However the katydids and cicadas songs are buzzy or raspy or whiney because their frequencies are less pure and higher than crickets, say entomologists.

Many folks like to listen to the insect song.

Have you ever kept katydid's or cicadas, or crickets for pet?

Please leave your comments and share here.

Crickets are known to be kept for fighting in some parts of Asia. Certain species of crickets in Asia can't stand each other's presence when both are males. It is much like Betta fish fighting in Thailand.

When two male crickets face each other, both will start "sing" and a fight will follow. The victor is usually decided fairly quick and the loser will die if they are kept in the same small enclosure for extend period.

I have heard some gamblers in Asia use crickets fighting to gamble. It has a long history too. People would go catch wild crickets in the summer, and only keep the "good" ones in small enclosures. Some of them even feed gingseng and other herbs in hope of keep their crickets in top conditions for the fight. Crazy in my opinion.