Crickets Tell Temperature

Snowy Tree Cricket - Female - waiting for the male 'chirp'

Snowy Tree Cricket - Female - waiting for the male 'chirp'

One of the things about summer that I enjoy is that you can hear insect music in the air. Did you know that you can use cricket chirps to calculate temperature? The most accurate variety is the Snowy Tree Cricket (Oecanthus fultoni). Count the number of chirps in 13 seconds and then add 40 to the total… this gives you the current temperature in Fahrenheit. The discoverer of this phenomenon was an American physicist and inventor, Amos Dolbear, It was discovered in 1897 and became known as Dolbear’s Law. Thanks to Carl Johnson we can hear 3 samples of the chirping produced by the Snowy Tree Cricket on his YouTube post.

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