Stretch receptors aid sound detection: silicon cricket

1 of 1 Silicon Cricket / Arpingstone / License

The hearing organs of the silicon cricket detect sound vibrations and their direction via chordotonal organs called stretch receptors.

Biomimicry Taxonomy

	Process information >
	Sense signals/environmental cues >
	Sound and other vibrations

Biomimetic Application Ideas

Hearing aids, location of sound sources.

> Visit strategy page

[Collapse all sections] Summary

"Crickets can locate conspecifics by phonotaxis to the calling (mating) song they produce, and can evade bats by negative phonotaxis from echolocation calls…The physics of this system is well understood (Michelsen et al., 1994); the mechanism (see Fig. 1) is a pair of sound receivers with effectively four acoustic inputs, one on each foreleg, which are the external surfaces of the tympana, and two on the body, the prothoracic or acoustic spiracles (Michelsen, 1998). Connecting tracheal tubes between these four inputs mean that phase cancellation occurs as sounds travel inside the cricket, producing a directional response at the tympana to frequencies near to that of the calling song. The amplitude of vibration of the tympana, and hence the firing rate of the auditory afferent neurons attached to them, vary as a sound source is moved around the cricket and the sounds from the different inputs move in and out of phase. The outputs of the two tympana match when the sound is straight ahead, and the inputs are bilaterally symmetric with respect to the sound source. However, when sound at the calling song frequency is off-centre the phase of signals on the closer side comes better into alignment, and the signal increases on that side, and conversely decreases on the other. Consequently the cricket can turn towards the sound source by turning to the side with the higher tympanal vibration amplitude." (Reeve et al. 2007:307-308)

About the inspiring organism

Silicon cricket
Gryllus bimaculatus Thunberg 1815
[Two-spotted cricket]

IUCN Red List Status: Unknown

Some organism data provided by: OSF: Orthoptera Species File Online
Organism/taxonomy data provided by:
Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2008 Annual Checklist

Bioinspired products and application ideas

Application Ideas: Hearing aids, location of sound sources.

Industrial Sector(s) interested in this strategy: Medicine, speech and language, medical products

Experts

Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour
Barbara Webb
School of Informatics, JCMB, University of Edinburgh

References

Reeve, R.; van Schaik, A.; Jin, C.; Hamilton, T.; Torben-Nielsen, B.; Webb, B. 2007. Directional hearing in a silicon cricket. BioSystems. 87: 307-13.

Stretch receptors aid sound detection: silicon cricket

Content tools

Curator of this page

Comments