New 'Supersonus' Insect Makes Love Call Only Dogs can Hear

Scientists have recently discovered a new genus and three species of insect with the highest ultrasonic calling songs ever recorded in the animal kingdom.

Katydids (or bushcrickets) are insects hailing from the rainforests of Colombia and Ecuador. It turns out these insects are quite vocal when bitten by the love bug, as males produce an enormously high-pitched sound by rubbing its wings together - called stridulation - to attract distant females for mating.

"Male katydids produce songs by 'stridulation' where one wing (the scraper) rubs against a row of 'teeth' on the other wing. The scraper is next to a vibrating drum that acts like a speaker," Dr. Fernando Montealegre-Z, who was involved in the study, explained in a statement. "The forewings and drums are unusually reduced in size in the Supersonus species, yet they still manage to be highly ultrasonic and very loud."

The acoustics can reach as high as 150kHz - most katydids range between 5 kHz and 30 kHz - awarding the insect the new genus name Supersonus. And the noise is out of our league, as humans can hear only up to only 20 kHz.

These calls may attract the wrong kind of mate, but katydids have learned to adapt. Their known predator the bat can detect their supersonic signals and use it as a sort of tracker, but katydids have learned to spend less of their time signing to avoid being eaten. Also, their sounds are so high-pitched that they fade faster over long distances, making it so bats can only breifly hear them in a fly-by.

Scientists believe these high-pitched love calls could also "give us inspiration for our engineered ultrasonics," Dr. James Windmill added.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.