Insects change the way they communicate when drowned out by man-made noises

Birds and frogs do it, even whales have been known to do it. Now scientists have for the first time shown that insects also change the way they sing to one another when drowned out by man-made noises.

Click HERE to listen to a grasshopper battling traffic noise

Grasshoppers living next to a main road respond to the increased background volume of passing traffic by adjusting their summer courtship songs, scientists have discovered.

In order to make themselves heard above the low-rumble noise pollution of moving vehicles, male bow-winged grasshoppers of central Europe alter the pitch of their songs’ lower notes so that they rise to a mini-crescendo, the scientists found.

“Bow-winged grasshoppers produce songs that include low and high frequency components,” said Ulrike Lampe of the University of Bielefeld in Germany, who led the study published in the journal Functional Ecology.

“We found that grasshoppers from noisy habitats boost the volume of the lower-frequency part of their song, which makes sense since road noise can mask signals in this part of the frequency spectrum,” Dr Lampe said.