Chinese And Cuban ‘Sonic Attacks’ Could Be The Result Of Crickets, According To Scientists

When a bizarre “sonic attack” was reported in Cuba last year, experts were at a loss to explain the occurrence. However, scientists now believe that crickets might be to blame for the event that caused symptoms such as dizziness, vertigo, pain, and ringing in the ears during the mysterious attack.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, American diplomats in Cuba last year were reporting strange attacks that left them feeling ill. At the time, neither the U.S. or Cuban governments could explain what had happened. Then, another of these episodes, being described as a sonic attack, was reported by a U.S. government official stationed in Guangzhou, China.

At the time, considering U.S. diplomats appeared to be targeted, there was speculation that Cuba and China could somehow be behind the attacks. However, evidence of this could not be substantiated.

The Associated Press (AP) released further information in October of last year detailing the audio associated with the sonic attacks. The audio was enhanced to a louder volume as to be easily audible. It is not believed that listening to the audio below will induce the effects witnessed in the U.S. diplomats due to the short duration of the sound. Experts were also unsure of what device was used to record the sonic attack.

However, according to CNN, these attacks might be caused by something as simple as crickets. Scientists have spent time analyzing the audio and have deduced that the sounds produced were the same as crickets. In particular, a variety of crickets such as the Indies short-tailed cricket, Anurogryllus celerinictus.

Research that was released on January 4 to BioRxiv states that chirping from the Indies short-tailed cricket matched “in nuanced detail, the AP recording in duration, pulse repetition rate, power spectrum, pulse rate stability, and oscillations per pulse.”

“The AP recording also exhibits frequency decay in individual pulses, a distinct acoustic signature of cricket sound production,” the scientists wrote in their study.

When US diplomats in Cuba reported hearing bizarre noises, State Department officials feared they might have fallen victim to an "acoustic attack."

Now, after analyzing recordings, a British and an American scientist say the sound could be crickets. https://t.co/1xu3klfFGl

— CNN (@CNN) January 7, 2019

The study was done by Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a professor of sensory biology at the University of Lincoln in the U.K. and Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley. While it is possible the sonic attacks were caused by crickets, the scientists didn’t rule out the “possibility that embassy personnel were victims of another form of attack” or that the symptoms experienced by the diplomats could be considered psychosomatic.

While the new study indicates that crickets could be the source behind these recent sonic attacks, a State Department spokesperson told CNN that “a US government interagency investigation, involving medical, scientific, and technical experts across the US government and academia, is ongoing to determine the source and cause of these events.”

“The safety and security of US personnel, their families, and US citizens abroad is and has always been the Department of State’s top priority.”