Cricket Thermometer

When everything else is silenced at night, you’ll hear the crickets’ chirp.

Apart from frequently used as the background sound of a night scene in the movies, or as your gecko pet’s lunch, crickets have another bizarre purpose; a thermometer (surprise!). Weird but, yes, we can actually estimate the surrounding temperature by counting cricket chirps!

(By the way, you don’t need to get Myth Buster to confirm this because Wikipedia has all the proofs you need.)

It was this guy name Amos Dolbear who formulated the Dolbear’s Law that states the relationship between air temperature and the rate of which cricket chirps. He published the law in 1897 in an article called The Cricket as a Thermometer. (Source: Wikipedia)

Yeap, that’s Dolbear right there.

So how to calculate?

In Fahrenheit (°F)
The number of chirps in 15 seconds is added to 40.
For example: The cricket chirps 44 times in 15 seconds.
Therefore, the temperature would be: 45 + 40 = 80°F

In Celcius (°C)
The number of chirps in 8 seconds is added to 5.
For example: The cricket chirps 20 times in 8 seconds.
Therefore the temperature would be: 20 + 5 = 25°C

However the formula is more accurately applied to a particular species of tree crickets, Oecanthus fultoni, or commonly known as the snowy tree crickets, which are usually found in North America. Here’s a photo of it:

Amazing little thing, isn’t it?

Posted in Insects, Mother Nature