Cricket
This beautiful Cricket turns up from time to time along the coast here. The
incredibly long antennae look so vulnerable. To have evolved they must have some
crucial advantage which gave long antennae an 'edge'. Does anyone know what the
animal does with them?
Peter Byles, Ceibwr
I noticed on the Pembrokeshire blog someone was asking why the bush cricket in the photo had such long antennae.
ReplyDeleteThe answer may be because the Speckled Bush Cricket (Leptophyes punctatissinum) is flightless, although having said that, there are Bush-crickets with long wings and yet still antennae longer than the body.
Perhaps it is because bush-crickets are more nocturnal than grasshoppers and literally need to use them as "feelers". Various antennae are used for a variety of purposes, but in this case, it is clearly not for hearing as its "ears" are on the front legs. Day-flying Adelidae moths have relatively even longer antennae. I don't think the reason why has been discovered in that case either. As it would be difficult to do a scientific study on each species antennae, I believe we will have to simply speculate.
Dennis Trunecka.