Thread by @soychicka

** crickets **

No. Seriously. Somebody actually wrote that up for publication.
Neglecting to address, however, that

a) the audio recordings do not sound alike
b) Pretty sure Anurogryllus celerinictus - the Indies short-tail cricket - not found in China.

https://twitter.com/ChristopherNeth/status/1082343177691037698

Here's the cricket call:
entnemdept.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/buzz/49…

Here's the audio from the 'attack' :

I'm hearing at least one other phase shift in there that doesn't seem to match up with the A. celerinictus audio.... But most importantly, basing quant analytics on a single 20s audio sample? Ummmmmmm..... 🤷🏼‍♀️

Now, there's very little distribution data available on the cited family, so I'm not sure that it isn't found in China - but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in Kyrgyzstan where I was collecting ( 🤪 ).

Let's ask @ThomasJWalker @UFEntomology if there's any data stashed away?

Either distribution or life history info would be helpful - or pointers to any relevant citations would be helpful, but a quick search is returning.... **crickets**

But, um, to be clear, it's totes possible that there was some kind of interference between environmental noise and whatever caused the harm that caused that to best represent the sound heard during impact - constructive interference could lead to noticing otherwise distant chirps

Or, you know. Whatever. It's not even clear if the AP recording was made by one of the victims or a reconstruction, and it had background noise filtered out, so... 🤷🏼‍♀️

Still. China.

Here's the original, not-peer-reviewed-preprint that all the stories from domestic outlets are blindly citing as proof that it was crickets.

Again: 🤷🏼‍♀️
biorxiv.org/content/biorxi…