Isn’t it enough that crickets are the loudest insects – comparable to the roar of a Stihl chainsaw after a hurricane?
Or that they are among the largest insects, some of which are larger than hummingbirds?
Now a pair of chemical and biomolecular engineers have engaged these superlative insects in a kind of… peeing contest.
Spoiler alert. Among bugs, they are the winners, able to pee in a jet stream unmatched by their peers.
According to Elio Challita and Saad Bhamia, who were colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology when they wrote a paper on the subject, it has not yet been observed in any creature smaller than a mammal. The paper was published in March by the National Academy of Sciences, complete with a video showing a cicada on a leopard tree in Singapore appearing to take a well-aimed whiz.
Why do crickets pee like a pressure washer?
The emergence this year of two broods of periodical cicadas in the U.S., including Brood
Challita and Bhamia’s research doesn’t show whether periodic crickets urinate as if they were firing a squirt gun, but their research shows that they believe all crickets have this talent. It can be assumed that periodical crickets, the Rip Van Winkles of the insect kingdom, emerge from the ground after 13 or 17 years, depending on their offspring, and were overdue for a pit stop. But the researchers say crickets’ urination is more likely the result of physiology and diet.
They need to drink a lot to get enough nutrients, so they have to urinate a lot, and their bodies retain the fluid they ingest for as long as possible to get all the energy out of it. By the time they release it, the release sounds more like a pressure washer than the polite dripping of other insects.
Periodical cicadas appear in April or May and are usually gone by June, so we’ll never know if they can write their names in the snow.
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