Highest-pitched sound produced by an insect

The highest-pitch sound created by an insect – and animal overall – is 150 kHz, produced by males of Supersonus aequoreus, a predatory katydid (i.e., a tettigoniid bush cricket belonging to the taxonomic order Orthoptera, which contains the grasshoppers and crickets). Formally described in 2014, and native to rainforests on the Colombian islands of Gorgona and Gorgonilla, males produce this hyperintense ultrasonic squeaking sound in order to attract females for mating purposes. It is created by the male rubbing a file-like structure called a "scraper" on the left forewing against a modified concave right forewing (a process known as stridulation), the latter transforming into a highly effective resonance chamber when pressed against the insect's dorsum (back), which greatly intensifies the resulting squeak's pitch. Details of the katydid's superlative mating call were published in the journal PLOS One on 5 June 2014.

Prior to the discovery of S. aequoreus in 2014, the highest ultrasound frequency of any known insect was produced by males of another predatory katydid, the spider-like katydid (Arachnoscelis arachnoides) – so-called as it closely resembles a spider – which also inhabits the Pacific coastal rainforests of western Colombia (particularly in the National Park Isla Gorgona). Fernando Montealegre-Z (Colombia/Canada), Glenn K Morris and Andrew C Mason (both Canada) of the University of Toronto, Canada, measured this katydid's "chirp" reaching as high as 130 kHz.

For context, the upper limit of human hearing is around 20 kHz.