As with most insects, names are deceiving, and katydids are not immune to this small, linguistic quirk. In the continental USA, bush crickets are known as katydids, but the katydid name is often applied, mistakenly, to cicadas—a completely unrelated family of hefty, flagrantly operatic insects. It isn’t uncommon to hear people speaking of long-horned grasshoppers, when referring to bush crickets. In the Midwestern USA, such creatures are also mistakenly called leafhoppers. There are such creatures as leafhoppers, but they don’t look like this spermatophylax-cleaning gentleman here, and they’re a lot smaller in overall size. Katydids belong to the family, Tettigoniidae, and like most insect families, membership is rather prodigious. There are more than 6,400 members of this particular insect family, though one must travel to tropical countries in order to see the more garish representatives. Most of the tettigoniids in North America are green and devoid of flagrant decoration. They’re minimalists, it would seem. Like cicadas (with whom katydids are often confused) the males are operatic. They produce clicking, whirring songs by a process of stridultion. Males produce stridulating organs on their hind legs, and often on their wings. Stidulating sounds are produced in ways similar to rubbing the teeth of two combs together. I’ve attempted such methods of stridulation myself. No insect has yet responded, or if so, the response wasn’t the one I was expecting. Maybe I should use more expensive combs with finer teeth. I caught this particular person, grooming—as if oblivious—in the oft-mentioned truck-yard. I was in the process of cleaning up, when I saw something green and distinctly non-garbage-like on a box (filled with plastic wrap) destined for the local garbage dump. As I go nowhere without my camera, I nabbed as many pictures of the creature as possible, and didn’t realize, later, that the grooming model is probably a male, making sure that his spermatophylax is nice and clean. In some species of katydid, males possess a detachable organ-thingy known as a spermatophylax. It is commonly consumed by females of the species; the spermatophylax is a kind of…well…biological super-adhesive; it is utilized by katydid males to ensure prolonged spermatophore contact with the vital, reproductive parts of the female in question. This increases the male’s chances at paternity. For some odd reason, katydid reproduction is of extreme interest to humans. Some of this is probably due to the fact that they’re considered a pest species as they’re voracious and tend to devour the nice, botanical things humans don’t want them devouring. It is logical, then, to look at their reproductive habits in an attempt to derail reproduction and thus, reduce their numbers. This hasn’t actually happened to any significant extent, but we have learned that one particular breed of bush cricket possesses the most gigantic testes of any animal species on earth: among tuberous bush cricket males, the testes account for 14% of the creature’s body mass: that’s a lot of maleness! This, I think, has done nothing but add to the common neurotic tendency of some human males to feel horrendously inadequate. I find that hilarious. But unfortunately, this isn’t a prodigiously male tuberous bush cricket; it’s just a common, green katydid (with a spermatophylax,) found in a Chicago truck-yard. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all on the verge of a great weekend.