katydids

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A Section of Nevada Is Basically Just Gross Right Now

Thanks to the invasion of foul-smelling Mormon crickets

(Newser) - Elko, Nevada, is home to about 20,000 people—and, currently, millions of Mormon crickets. It's a migratory population so overwhelming that Department of Transportation crews have been using plows to clear the roads of the insects' squashed bodies. A DOT tweet last week had photos of the guts-slicked...

Scientists Replicate Prehistoric Cricket Sound

Could be the world's oldest known song: researchers

(Newser) - Scientists have brought back a sound that hasn't been heard in 165 million years: the song of a prehistoric cricket. Using a remarkably intact fossil of a katydid—also known as a bush cricket—researchers were able to create soundalike replicas based on the creature's wings, AFP reports....

Jiminy Cricket! Insect Has World's Biggest Cojones

It's got biggest testicles, in terms of body weight

(Newser) - Even the most well-endowed men have nothing on the tuberous bushcricket, or katydid, which UK biologists say holds the world record for the creature with the largest testicles—at least in relation to the weight of its body. At 14% of body weight, this would be equivalent, in human terms,...

Mormon Crickets: Earmark to Some, Real Plague to Others

(Newser) - Critics, most notably John McCain, have lambasted the latest omnibus spending bill for its 8,500 earmarks; one frequently cited provision is $1 million to fight Mormon crickets in Utah. “Is that a species of cricket or a game played by the Brits?” joked McCain over Twitter. But to...

4 Stories