Survival Skills: Telling the Temperature with Crickets

So you told a joke around the campfire and all you got was crickets? Save the day by impressing your camping buddies with this little trick; telling the temperature using crickets!

You see, crickets are cold blooded, so they take on the temperature of their surroundings. This affects the chemical reactions in their little bodies and the rate at which they chirp. A formula called the Arrhenius equation is used to calculate the energy required to make these chemical reactions occur. When it’s warm, the crickets have more energy and they are able to chirp faster.

Start by isolating the chirp of a single cricket. Count how many chirps the cricket makes in 14 seconds. Do this at least three times to get an average. Add 40 to the average number of chirps in 14 seconds to get the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. For example, if the cricket chirps 20 times in 14 seconds, the temperature is 20+40=60°F.

To get the temperature in degrees Celsius, get an average of how many times the cricket chirps in 25 seconds, then divide by 3 and add 4. So if they cricket chirps 33 times in 25 seconds, 33÷3=11, 11+4=15°C

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