Jakarta –
Never heard a sound insects which is quite noisy at night? it could be that it is the work of an insect called katydid. But can cicadas hear themselves? how is the condition of the ear?
Launching Science News, researchers in China recently reported to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and found twenty-four katydid fossils that are around 160 million years old.
The discovery also reveals the existence of the earliest known form of insect ears.
According to the researchers, ancient sound sensors identical to those found on these katydids may have picked up the first short-range frequency calls and helped the insects hide from predators.
Tonggeret Has Ear Drums
Insects were the first land dwellers to send sound waves through the air. This makes it possible for insects to communicate at a greater distance from sight.
Meanwhile, some insects use their antennae to detect vibrations in the air. However, it is different from cicadas, which have ears like mammals, which use their eardrums to hear.
Chunpeng Xu, a paleontologist from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China and colleagues, and colleagues suggest that because the well-preserved eardrums of insects are rare in the fossil record, it is not clear how the eardrums of the katydids evolved.
The Ability to Listen to Tonggeret
Analysis of Chinese fossils boosts the known record of the ear ability of male and female cicadas to listen for potential mates or male competitors between 157 million and 166 million years ago, respectively.
Before katydid, the previous record holder for insect ears was the oldest cricket found in Colorado, which is about 50 million years old.
What’s more, the sound-producing structures of 87 fossil male katydid wings from China, South Africa and Kyrgyzstan dating to about 157 million to 242 million years ago may have produced a variety of calls, including high-frequency calls of up to 16 kilohertz. (For comparison, humans hear frequencies ranging from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz.)
According to Xu, woodpeckers can communicate over short distances even when high-frequency chirps do not travel far.
This property of the katydid may be useful because the mammal’s hearing improves at the same time. By limiting range, multiple calls can help the katydid hide from predators and find the flock insects.
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