You may have raised it by the name of Yan Devil.

People generally have deep memories of tragic things, such as the beginning of school. At this time 22 years ago, I was a fart child in the first year of junior high school. At the beginning of the biology class in junior high school, there was a content for students to catch mouse wives to do experiments by themselves. At that time, I honestly went to catch, in addition to the mouse woman, but also caught a lot of other insects, including the yellow-faced oil gourd Teleogryllus emma.

Yellow face oil gourd. Picture: Atsuo Fujimaru / Nature Prodution

Have the same name as the devil

Yellow-faced oil gourd is an insect of the genus Crickets, which is widely distributed in China, but there are not many species. Because the appearance is too close, the species are often misdefined in the past literature, resulting in confusion. For example, in North China, the most common species is the yellow-faced oil gourd, which is also raised and played in Beijing and Tianjin, but there is a kind of T. mitratus in the south, which is distributed in the northernmost area of Henan and Anhui, but its Chinese name is Beijing oil gourd.

Beijing oil gourd: "obviously I have not been to Beijing, but I have a Beijing hukou." Picture: Ma Chenghan

The body length of the yellow-faced oil gourd is about 25mm, which is the largest among all kinds of crickets distributed in Beijing. as the name implies, its face is yellow. In addition, there are light stripes above the compound eyes, like eyebrows, which is the symbol of the genus oil gourd, so it is also called the eyebrow cricket in some places. The Japanese call the yellow-faced oil gourd Yan devil cricket because of the lines on the face, and the real name emma is the Roman sound of Japanese "Yan devil" (that is, Yan Wang ye).

I hear the devil looks like me? Picture: saltatoria.info

The hind wings of many kinds of crickets are underdeveloped or fall off in adulthood, but the oil gourd is different. Their hind wings are very long, stretching out between the two tails. At first glance, they look like the genitals of female insects. In fact, only one glance at the front wings is needed to identify sex: there are obvious complex lines on the male's forewings, while the females do not.

Ann can tell that I am male and female. Picture: saltatoria.info

A melodious cry

Like katydids, Gryllidae makes sound by rubbing its forewings. Yellow face gourd also has several kinds of song, summoning the female is first from low to high even cry, and then sporadic to a few small. When a girl is attracted, the male's song will become hasty and high, which is looking for a relationship. If it is not the female but the other male, it will become a mode of struggle, the sound of the fight is irregular, and when the winner is divided, the winner will roar several times to declare victory.

The zigzag lines on the male's forewings are the secret of the call. Picture: Amaru.me

Female yellow face oil gourd. Picture: geocities.jp

Both Beijing and Tianjin like to raise yellow-faced oil gourds in order to listen to them. The elegant Weta, that is, the Weta, which has appeared before, is also a singing worm that listens to it, but it likes to sing in the sunny day with a clear and powerful voice, while the yellow-faced oil gourd likes to call when it is cool at night, and the song is euphemistic and melodious, not noisy. I fell asleep listening to it.

The melodious cry of the yellow face gourd. Source: ChannelPhi / YouTube

Of course, there are people who don't want them to sing at night, so they put the bugs in a warm place at night and force them to jet lag. Yellow-faced oil gourds usually mate and breed in September, lay eggs in the soil, and hatch in May next year. Adults live only a month or two after laying eggs, but if they are raised properly, they can live until the following spring.

The egg of the yellow face oil gourd. Picture: Moriue Nobuo / Nature Procdution

If you have a song, you have to have hearing, or who else are you going to call? Although all kinds of crickets, including the yellow-faced oil gourd, have no ears, they can feel sound waves in three structures: the tympanic organ on the forefoot, the Jiang's organ at the base of the antennae, and the two tails. The most important auditory organ is the tympanic membrane. If the forefoot is removed, they are basically deaf. The female does not respond to the call of the male, and the male is indifferent to the provocation of his rival. When fighting a cricket, if both of the cricket's forefeet are broken, it will not be able to fight.

Can hear, can fight

Speaking of fighting crickets, there was a puppet cartoon called "Cricket" in the 1980s, which was adapted from the section "promoting Weaving" in Strange Tales of Liaozhai. there is a plot in the animation, that is, the neighbor's child said that the protagonist caught not the cricket, but the oil gourd, and can't fight. In fact, this is wrong, the oil gourd can also fight, but only with the same kind of fight, and crickets, that is, the card fighting Velarifictorus micado, because the fundamental demand of the struggle is to fight for a mate, the two insect species are not the same fight ah?

A domineering fan card fight. Picture: USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory

The yellow face oil gourd can fight, but the scene of the battle is different from that of the Mika fight. Due to the different structure of mouthparts, Mika can directly rush up and bite when fighting, but the yellow-faced oil gourd is not good. You have to tilt your head and bite from the side, and it is difficult to open your mouth, so when fighting, the two bugs often roll all over the floor. Oil gourds are also popular in southern China, but they are mainly Beijing oil gourds, which are not produced in Beijing. Their songs are not as good as those of yellow-faced oil gourds, but they have a strong sense of territory, are naturally aggressive, and can face the enemy head on, just like Mikadou gourd.

Traditional cricket fighting equipment. Picture: Sydney

Whether used for listening or fighting, oil gourds have to be raised in captivity, and they are raised much like other crickets. They have to be filled with soil in cans, rammed and then put worms into them. If you want to take the oil gourd with you at any time in winter, you have to use a special gourd to install it. In addition to heat preservation, it also provides acoustic effects and makes the sound more pleasant.

A device for listening to the sound of insects. Picture: desert porcupine

Song worm culture began to become popular in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. People called Mika Dougu as white insects, and yellow-faced oil gourds as black worms. At first, they only captured wild individuals, and then they began to breed artificially. Up to now, very fine breeding techniques have been developed. Everything from environmental temperature and humidity to feed selection to disease prevention and control.

Some people say that people in Beijing and Tianjin like to raise songworms is a loss of spirit, while others say that this is a traditional culture that should be carried forward. I think it is no problem to keep pets as long as they are legal and do not affect the ecology, and there is no need to raise them to a higher plane of principle. As for the singing insects themselves, just imagine, after nine cold winters and bleak heaven and earth, bursts of insects can be heard in the reinforced concrete forest. Isn't this breath of life just the adjustment of a difficult life?

This is the 257th article in the fourth year of the species calendar, from @ Desert Porcupine, author of the species calendar.

Yesterday, Calendar Niang gave the first clue, everyone's brains and stories are great (but the real theme won't tell you right now! )

Come on, go on and guess the theme of "species Calendar 2019". Of course, there will be prizes.

2/6

Clue

Key words of today

Castle 708

The boulder fortress rose from the seaside, and it was not just lords, knights and villagers who made a living. The barnacle came uninvited and settled on a stone wall that could be submerged by the sea. There is no immutable border, the new town is built, the old city is dilapidated, and there is no eternal coastline, which has changed with the passage of time. But even if the sea recedes forever, the stone walls of the abandoned castle will still leave the remains of the calcareous "castle" of barnacles.

"species Calendar 2019" theme clue map

New clues will be released at the end of every day.

There is a prize to answer today.

Q: of all the species introduced in the species calendar, which one subverts your perception the most? Please make sentences with the following sentence patterns:

A great shock! [× species] unexpectedly [some bizarre feature]!

(example: shocked! Bamboo rats are really prone to heatstroke! )

According to today's clues and award-winning answers, leave what you want to say, welcome to leave a message and get the most likes within 24 hours. Calendar Niang will give Ta a new species calendar for free.

Today's "propositional composition" can not be written? Never mind!

Calendar Niang today's avatar

The family Gryllidae is a fan of the card fight.