Bug Buzz



Let's face it: The sounds that insects make can be some of the most annoying noises out there.

Several types of insect noises frequently represent specific situations.


 * - Bees or Hornets: Someone's about to get stung.
 * - Cicadas: Usually signify a summer or hot weather situation.
 * - Flies: If there is a lot of flies buzzing around, something is dead, or possibly very dirty.
 * - Crickets: absolute stillness and calm. See also Chirping Crickets.
 * - Mosquitoes: usually interrupting someone's sleep.

Anime and Manga

 * Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Its title translates to "When the Cicadas Cry."
 * This sound effect is creepy, since if you listen very closely to the background, when the scene turns dark or scary, it sounds suspiciously like high-pitched screaming. Hence the title.
 * Most high school-based anime includes the buzzing sound of cicadas, usually representing summertime.
 * The very first episode of AIR.
 * Fruits Basket
 * Junjou Romantica
 * Peach Girl
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion also has cicada sounds. Especially during the scene right after the defeat of Shamshel, and in the opening scenes of Rebuild of Evangelion.
 * The "Endless Eight" episodes of Haruhi Suzumiya are underscored by the equally endless buzzing of cicadas.

Film

 * Hayao Miyazaki and the films of Studio Ghibli frequently use insects sounds for emphasis.
 * My Neighbor Totoro's nighttime scenes are loaded with nocturnal buzzing.
 * Subverted in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in that most of the insect life sound like propeller planes. Spoilers for the manga:.
 * The 1998 film Only Yesterday, although it makes sense as the story is a city girl spending two weeks on a farm.
 * Cicadas buzz throughout the movie Whisper of the Heart.
 * In the movie Practical Magic, the noise of the death beetle signified that  was about to die.
 * The Mummy 1999: Ugh, those chittering noises those black bugs made. And the sound of all those running legs as they overwhelmed somebody and crawled into their mouths!
 * In The Right Stuff the invading horde of news reporters is always accompanied by the sounds of locusts.

Live-Action TV

 * In the Star Trek: Voyager episode Macrocosm, the macrovirus buzzes, frequency inversely proportional to size.
 * The Bolivia episode of Top Gear had a startling moment around sunset on the first day when all the insects in the rainforest seemed to suddenly sound off at once. Richard Hammond, who is afraid of insects, was not happy at all.

Music

 * The Wall: David Gilmour uses his electric guitar to represent "the worms eating into" Pink's brain as he slips further and further into madness. Worms don't buzz, but since they represent decay here, we can assume that flies and other insects were thrown into the mix.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myth and Legend

 * According to legend in the south of France, cicadas were created by God specifically to keep people from sleeping during the middle of the day so they would get back to work.

Video Games

 * A move in Pokémon is called "Bug Buzz". It's a sound-based Bug attack that damages its target. And it's the second most powerful Bug move in the game.
 * Some of the grasshopper enemies in Bug!! have an attack where they fire out a sound wave from their legs.

Web Comics
"A fly: ...zzzzzzzzzz (sticks in a web) Bzzzz! Zzzz* Annie: ...Hello again, Ketrak."
 * Ketrak, from Gunnerkrigg Court: This instance, for example.

Real Life

 * Crickets chirp at different rates depending on their species and the temperature of their environment. Most species chirp at higher rates the higher the temperature is (approximately 62 chirps a minute at 13 °C in one common species; each species has its own rate). The relationship between temperature and the rate of chirping is known as Dolbear's Law. Using this law it is possible to calculate the temperature in Fahrenheit by adding 40 to the number of chirps produced in 14 seconds by the snowy tree cricket common in the United States.
 * A species of cricket has been discovered that does not chirp when expected. The species in question is prey to a parasitic fly that lays its eggs in the body of the cricket, so that the fly's larva can use the cricket as a food source. The cricket's behavior has evolved so that it only chirps at those times during which the fly is least active, which is outside of the usual temperature cycle for crickets.
 * The vuvuzela sounds like a huge horde of REALLY ANGRY wasps.