Mole Crickets

Mole Crickets are presented as an example of the elaborate mechanisms animals use to make communication effective: they amplify their song by singing from a burrow they have carefully dug into the shape of a double-exponential horn. The example connects a distinctive physical structure to the book’s broader account of communication as behavior shaped by natural selection.

The Burrow as an Amplifier

The burrow is not merely a place from which the Mole Crickets sing. Its deliberately described horn-like form acts as a megaphone, helping the insects produce a song of stentorian loudness. The account emphasizes the material means of the signal: sound is amplified through an excavated structure, rather than communication being treated as an abstract act detached from the animal’s surroundings.

Communication and Evolution

Mole Crickets occur among examples of survival machines taking elaborate measures to make communication effective. Their amplified song sits beside birdsong, humpback whale song, and the dance through which bees indicate the direction and distance of food. Together, these examples show the variety of means by which one animal can influence another’s behavior or nervous system.

The example also fits the book’s gene-centered explanation without implying that a cricket consciously designed its burrow for a purpose. The argument is that natural selection favors genes whose effects help ensure their propagation; genes that influence the development of signaling behavior and its physical means can therefore have consequences beyond the body that carries them. The Mole Crickets’ horn-shaped burrow makes that general claim concrete: an animal’s surroundings, behavior, and signal can be understood as connected parts of an evolutionary outcome.