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Stridulation is the act of producing a high-pitched, creaking, or musical sound by rubbing together specialized body parts. This sound production is common in many insects, such as male crickets and katydids, and sometimes females, and is important for their behavior and species' success.12

In grasshoppers, stridulation involves rubbing the hindleg across the folded front wing, which has serrations that create sound against raised veins. Crickets and katydids produce sound by rasping teeth on one front wing across a scraper on the other. Some heteropterans also stridulate by rubbing roughened body parts together, though these sounds are typically too faint for humans to hear. This method of sound production, where an animal rubs two hard body parts together, is a way for smaller animals to create higher-frequency sounds than their muscles could otherwise produce.234

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