Tool-making

Two-spotted tree cricket males are known to make holes in leaves in order to increase the volume of their song. Tree cricket baffles are manufactured tools – Mhatre – 2018 – Ethology – Wiley Online Library This video shows the male at the early stage of creating the hole. Although I missed the initial chewing, I made sure that any leaves inside the enclosure were free of large holes. I have found many of these holes, and they are generally in the same area of the leaves. This is the first time I have witnessed the initial creation of one of these holes, and was surprised that the whole process took less than 5 minutes. These holes were made my two Two-spotted tree cricket males. One male made the hole on the large leaf on the bottom, and another male made all 4 holes in the three leaves of on the top.