Stridulation

Grasshopper stridulation

Several unidentified grasshoppers stridulating.

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Ant stridulations

Pachycondyla apicalis

Stridulations from a Pachycondyla apicalis worker.

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Pachycondyla verenae

Stridulations from a Pachycondyla verenae worker.

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Pheidole pallidula

Stridulations from a Pheidole pallidula worker.

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Stridulation is the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts. This behavior is mostly associated with insects, but other animals are known to do this as well, such as a number of species of fish, snakes and spiders. The mechanism is typically that of one structure with a well-defined lip, ridge, or nodules (the "scraper" or plectrum) being moved across a finely-ridged surface (the "file" or stridulitrum—sometimes called the pars stridens) or vice versa, and vibrating as it does so, like the dragging of a phonograph needle across a vinyl record. Sometimes it is the structure bearing the file which resonates to produce the sound, but in other cases it is the structure bearing the scraper, with both variants possible in related groups.^[1] Common onomatopoeic words for the sounds produced by stridulation include chirp and chirrup.