Cricket Research

This morning we went to the computer lab to do some research on CRICKETS. So many questions came up yesterday when we were sketching with Mary Lou. Before heading to the computer lab we reviwed basic note-making and note-taking strategies. Note-TAKING includes all the facts we learn while reading. Researchers take notes using bullet points and writing down only the most important parts of a sentence or paragraph. The note-MAKING section can include questions, connections, and other types of thinking that are going in our brains as we read and learn. These research skills are going to be really important once we get into our nature trail project and creating podcasts. We have listed some of our note-taking and note-making about crickets below. Do you know anything else about crickets that we could add to our list?


Note Taking

• 24 different species
• predators = spiders, wasps, ground beetles, birds, small rodents, and lizards
• sometimes they eat other dead crickets if there is nothing else available (scavenger)
• some types live in caves
• cricket fighting is a sport, especially in Asia
• usually only males chirp
• some live in dry places
• in some places people eat crickets
• 6 joints in legs
• long antennas than grasshoppers
• considered good luck in Asia
• rub wings together to make noise (chirp)
• if you count number of chirps in 15 seconds + 40 = temperature in Fahrenheit
• some live under things like rocks
• microscopic hair on body and in spiracles
• left forewing of the male has a special vein that which bears 50-300 ridges, which is how they make chirping noise to attract a mate

Note Making

• Why do they have palps? What do they do with them?
• Why do people eat crickets?
• text-to-self connection: inside of spiracle looks like a beehive
• Who has longer legs? Cricket or grasshopper?
• I wonder if bees and wasps actually sting the cricket?