#bug map

Response Numbers: Between 4/17 (when I first posted the survey) and 4/30 (when I analyzed data for it), I received a total of 291 responses.

There were 14 responses in the first 24 hours after I posted the survey (before Blazing the post related to it).  For all subsequent days that the post was not Blazed, I received between 0 and 2 additional responses. By contrast, I received 145 responses during the first Blaze period and 110 responses during the second Blaze period. It isn't possible to definitively know exactly how many responses can be attributed to Blazing the post, but from this data, I'm comfortable assuming that it's a large majority of the responses.

The Blazed post: I exclusively advertised the relevant survey on Tumblr, and with one, specific post. The post itself was nothing fancy—just a quick description of the survey and some emojis, basically. It looked like this:

I’ve left the survey running (although I don’t promise I’ll analyze new data for it), so if you would like to complete it, you may do so here (NOTE: the survey contains a photo of a bug). Current results for the survey are also available here (NOTE: the results post also contains a photo of a bug).            

Blaze information: Both times that I Blazed the post, I purchased the second tier level (which provides 7,000 estimated impressions, although in both cases, the actual impressions ended up being ~10k, per the post-Blaze summary reports). I also opted to specifically target a US audience.

Data quality: One worry I had about Blazing my survey was that I’d get a bunch of joke responses or (worse) harassment, but that fortunately did not happen. I can't know for sure just how honest any individual respondent was, but the overall pattern of results was plausible and suggested there wasn't any widespread bad-faith responding. One respondent gave a clear joke answer, but that was it.

That Bug

To try to minimize bias towards the various names for the relevant bug, I will refer to the kind of bug the survey is about as “That Bug” or “The Bug.”

For reference, here’s the list of names for That Bug that I included in the survey, each of which was mentioned as a vernacular term for The Bug by at least 2 plausibly credible sources:

Child of the Earth Devil's baby Jerusalem cricket Potato bug Sand cricket Sand puppy Stone cricket Skull cricket

 Quick Caveat

A major assumption of the current analyses is that respondents selected “I am unfamiliar with this bug” if they were unfamiliar with That Bug, and, correspondingly, that any terms that respondents selected actually reflect terms that they are familiar with and would use. It’s possible that some respondents might not have actually recognized That Bug but selected one or more of the options anyway, which I do not have the data to test for directly. I suspect the term “potato bug” might have been selected occasionally by respondents who had heard the term being used in reference to a different kind of bug (as both roly polies and Colorado potato beetles are colloquially known by that name), which would mean that “potato bug” may have been selected more often than it “should” have. This is just a hunch, however.

Sample

A total of 291 respondents completed the survey by the cutoff date for the current sample (April 30, 2023), with 254 of those respondents being from the US, 7 from Canada, 7 from the UK, 5 Australia, and 13 from other countries that had less than 5 responses each (for a total of 32 responses from countries other than the US). Five respondents did not provide any location-related information.

(For the record, the sample skews so heavily American because I blazed the post advertising the survey to a US target audience, since That Bug is a North American insect.)

For the American respondents, 71 were from Western states, 52 were from the Midwest, 47 were from the Northeast, 80 were from the South, and 2 were from the non-continental US, based on the US Census definitions for those regions. Two respondents indicated that they were from the US but did not provide any additional region-level information. Note that a small handful of respondents mentioned being from multiple different states. For the sake of consistency, such respondents were grouped according to the first state that they listed.

 Familiarity with That Bug

Respondents were considered “familiar” with That Bug for the purposes of this analysis if they did not select the “I am unfamiliar with this bug” option AND provided at least one “valid” name for That Bug, either by selecting one of the pre-existing name options or by specifying something in the “other” field that could be reasonably understood as a name specifically referring to the relevant bug. “Other” responses that were overly vague (e.g., simply “cricket”) or that referred to a different kind of bug (e.g., “mole cricket”*) were considered “irrelevant” for the purposes of this definition.

*Here’s a link to a video of a mole cricket burrowing into some dirt. It’s not really relevant to this post, I just think it’s neat :) Anyway, I can definitely see how someone could mistake That Bug for a mole cricket—they look fairly similar, especially from the photo provided in the survey

By this definition, 101 respondents were familiar with The Bug and 190 respondents were unfamiliar with it, for an overall total of 34.7% of respondents being familiar with The Bug.

Among American respondents, the familiarity rate was 37.0%, while for non-American respondents it was 18.8%.

Overall familiarity rates by US region are depicted in the graph below:

Statistically, the South and West have significantly higher familiarity rates than do the Midwest, Northeast, or non-American regions (which do not differ). It’s probably worth mentioning that That Bug’s natural range is mostly restricted to the Western states within the US, at least as far as I have been able to discern.

Here’s the familiarity rates by geographic subregion (although note that the sample sizes start to get pretty small here, so take them with a grain of salt):

To sum up, only just over a third of the sample were familiar with That Bug, although the familiarity rate varies substantially by region. But, among those who are familiar with The Bug, what names did they call it?

Names for That Bug

The following graph depicts the pattern of responses across all completed surveys:

A strong majority of respondents selected “I am unfamiliar with this bug” and nothing else.

Restricting the graph to respondents who were familiar with The Bug (as defined previously) produces the following:

Most respondents who were familiar with That Bug referred to it as a “Jerusalem Cricket” and nothing else (40/101, 39.6% of “familiar” respondents), with the second most common response pattern being “Potato Bug” only (21/101, 20.8%). Interestingly, the third most common response pattern was the specific combination of “Jerusalem Cricket” AND “Potato Bug” (16/101, 15.8%). The remaining name options (and combinations thereof) occurred relatively infrequently among responses.

Adding up the number of occurrences of each name among familiar respondents (which takes into account cases where multiple names were selected) produces the following graph:

Some Notable “Other” responses:

One respondent entered “Kudüs cırcır böceği,” which to my understanding is the Turkish for “Jerusalem cricket.” I was unsure of whether I should count it towards “Jerusalem cricket” or not, but I ultimately decided not to. If you disagree with that decision, pretend that the “Jerusalem cricket” counter is 1 higher for all graphs that include the non-USA data One respondent entered “Satan’s fetus,” which I initially thought was a joke, but after looking into it a little, there is evidence that “Satan’s fetus” is actually another existing vernacular name for That Bug. Neat! Also notable among the “other” responses entered, one respondent noted that they and some other people that they know refer to That Bug as a “jailbug”, due to its stripes. I absolutely love that as a name for The Bug and would love for it to be adopted more widely. Regardless of whether it’s widely used enough to qualify as a regional name, it will always be a name for That Bug in my heart :)

In summary, “Jerusalem cricket” is the most commonly used name overall, and occurred a little over 50% more frequently than did the second-most-common term, “Potato bug,” which in turn occurred about three times as frequently as did the third-most-common term, “Sand cricket.” But, does this pattern hold across regions?

Names for That Bug by Region

(Note that all of the analyses in this section include data from “familiar” respondents only—which is to say that respondents who selected the “I am unfamiliar with this bug” option or who only provided an “invalid” response have been excluded.)

Here are the names selected for That Bug, broken out by region:

For all major regions of the US, “Jerusalem cricket" was the most commonly used name for That Bug, followed by “Potato bug”. Other terms were uncommon, although a couple of apparent regional differences emerged. In particular, “Child of the Earth” occurred exclusively in the West (where it was selected by 3 respondents, for a selection rate of 9.7% among familiar respondents). Additionally, “sand cricket,” was chosen by Southern respondents more frequently compared to respondents from other regions (6 occurrences, 16.7% of “familiar” respondents).

That Bug was rarely familiar to non-American respondents, but “potato bug” was the most commonly used term among that subpopulation (with 2 responses). “Jerusalem cricket”, “sand cricket”, and “sand puppy” were also each selected an additional time by non-Americans, as was the previously mentioned Turkish phrase “Kudüs cırcır böceği” (which, if counted as equivalent to “Jerusalem cricket” would eliminate the very slight preference for “potato bug” among non-American respondents).

Here's a map with a brief summary of responses per region (US only):

Sample sizes become quite small when looking at US subregions, but, for reference, here’s the relevant graph:

Interestingly, the pattern observed for the broad Census regions (Jerusalem cricket > Potato bug, by a moderately large margin) does not consistently hold among individual subregions. Notably, the subregions vary widely with respect to how frequently “potato bug” was selected relative to “Jerusalem cricket”, with some regions showing only a slight preference for “Jerusalem cricket” over “potato bug” (South Atlantic, East South Central, Pacific West, New England), while “Jerusalem cricket” was substantially favored in others (West South Central, West North Central, Mountain West). The East North Central subregion of the Midwest in particular was notable for showing a slight preference for “Potato bug” over “Jerusalem cricket”, in contrast to any other US region.

Do these differences reflect true regional dialect patterns or is this just random noise? I unfortunately don’t know the answer to that, but I am intrigued.

In any case, here’s a map depicting the pattern of responses by subregion (although, again, please note that the sample sizes per subregion are generally tiny, especially when restricted to familiar respondents only, so take the subregional patterns with a major grain of salt!):

Summary and Conclusions

That Bug is relatively obscure, with only a minority of respondents (roughly a third, overall) being familiar with it. “Jerusalem cricket” can probably be considered the most uncontroversial name for That Bug, as it was selected by a majority of respondents who were familiar with The Bug and was the dominant name for The Bug in almost every region and subregion investigated here. “Potato bug” was also commonly selected as a name for it, although much less frequently than “Jerusalem cricket.” All other possible names were uncommon and potentially regional.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the survey! And special thanks in particular to everyone who commented about their experiences with (or general reaction to) That Bug, or who left some kind words. To all the entomologists, aspiring entomologists, and general bug enthusiasts: it was wonderful reading about your love of little critters like That Bug. Reading the comments genuinely made my day :)

As I mentioned up top, the survey remains open, so you can still participate if you’d like to! I can’t guarantee that I will publish updated results, but I would like to revisit this topic in the future with more data. I’d love to see if the subregion trends hold up, and if I ever got a lot more data, I might even be able to look at state-level trends (although I’m almost certainly being too ambitious thinking about that!).

My Predictions:

Extremely few non-Americans will report being familiar with the relevant bug

A majority of Americans will also report being unfamiliar with the bug, although a much greater proportion of Americans will recognize it compared to non-Americans

Americans from Western states will be more likely to recognize the bug than will Americans from Eastern states

Familiarity with the bug will be greater for Americans from rural areas compared to Americans from urban areas

"Jerusalem cricket" will be the most commonly used name for the bug, by a substantial margin

"Potato bug" will be the second most commonly used name for the bug, but it will be more regional than "Jerusalem cricket" (mostly occurring in the mountain west and Midwest)

"Child of the Earth" will be uncommonly used overall but will have some usage in regions with a large Spanish-speaking population

All other terms will be very rare and likely also extremely regional. I expect it will be especially hard to get enough data on them

At least 1 person will object to my usage of the word "bug" in relation to this project, since the relevant insect is not a true bug (although I worry that I may have jinxed myself by mentioning that here lol)

Names for That Bug

Here’s how often each of the names for That Bug were selected, specifically among respondents who were familiar with the bug (how I defined “familiar” is included at the end, for the curious):

For the sample overall, “Jerusalem cricket” is solidly the most commonly-selected name, being chosen by a majority of respondents (57.2%). “Potato bug” was a distant second at 34.1%, followed by sand cricket at 17.8%. All other terms were fairly uncommon, with a selection rate of ~5% or less.

Respondents were allowed to select multiple names, but most only selected a single term (249/320, or ~78% of the familiar respondents). However, among familiar respondents who selected more than 1 name, nearly half specifically selected the combination of “Jerusalem cricket” and “potato bug” (32 selecting that combination vs. 38 selecting some other combination of names).

A number of respondents wrote that they would just call That Bug a “cricket”, which I considered too general to group with the other names that are more specific to That Bug. A pretty solid handful of folks guessed that it might be a mole cricket, but that’s actually a different critter (although it does look very similar and so it is understandable that it could be confused for That Bug). A few folks also guessed that it was a weta, which also looks quite similar and is in fact fairly closely related to That Bug, being part of the same superfamily (Stenopelmatoidea).

Names by Region

Here’s how the selected names varied by US region:

“Jerusalem cricket” was the top name across the board, but how dominant it was over “potato bug” and “sand cricket” varied a bit. “Child of the Earth” also appears to be more common in the West than elsewhere, which is worth examining further.

What happens when you look at the more specific sub-regions? Let’s find out!

“Jerusalem cricket” is reasonably common everywhere (although it ranges from being selected just under half the time to roughly 2/3rds of the time):

“Potato bug” varies much more dramatically by sub-region, being selected by a majority of respondents in the Pacific West but occurring much less often elsewhere, including the neighboring Mountain West, where it was only selected ~13% of the time!:

“Sand cricket” was somewhat uncommon across most sub-regions with a roughly 20-30% selection rate, on average, although it was notably less common in the Pacific West than anywhere else (only ~6%!):

Finally, “Child of the Earth” occurred rarely or never in most sub-regions, but emerged as a somewhat uncommon but not outright rare term in the Mountain West:

Notably, every single familiar respondent from New Mexico (n = 4 only, but still) selected “Child of the Earth”. It was also selected by a handful of respondents in Arizona and California, lending credence to it possibly being a Southwestern regional term.

Overall, one of the striking differences across sub-regions is the extent to which “Jerusalem cricket” is selected relative to “potato bug”, as shown here:

Notably, the Pacific West, unlike all other regions, showed a preference for “potato bug” over “Jerusalem cricket”. This was fascinating to me, so I looked into it a little more, and it appears that this is driven predominantly by Californians preferring “potato bug” (66%:45%), since Oregonians and Washingtonians preferred “Jerusalem cricket”:

It’s worth noting that a few other states besides California (Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina, and New Hampshire) show numerical preference for “potato bug” over “Jerusalem cricket,” but each of them has very small sample sizes (<10 familiar respondents), so I wouldn’t take the pattern too seriously for those other states.

Sample sizes for state-level maps are generally QUITE small (the sub-region maps are already probably pushing it a bit, tbh), but what if we throw caution to the wind and look at the most commonly selected name for each state anyway? HUGE asterisk to this map in that a pretty substantial majority of states are based on very small sample sizes and so this should be taken with a MAJOR grain of salt, but here’s what you get (it’s probably the closest I’ve come to my original Bug Map vision so far ~):

Shout-out to the sole Rhode Island respondent who was able to unilaterally dictate that Rhode Island, in contrast to all other states, would have “sand cricket” as the state’s preferred term for That Bug on my silly map. That’s the kind of power I aspire to every day :)

Anyway, to sum up, “Jerusalem cricket” is generally the preferred name for That Bug, but “potato bug” is its most common name in California (and potentially a few other states), and “Child of the Earth” is its preferred name in New Mexico (and may generally be a regional term in the Southwestern US).

Familiarity with That Bug

Overall, 29.3% of respondents were familiar with That Bug. And, unsurprisingly, given that it’s a North American insect, Americans were significantly more familiar with it than non-Americans, with 34.3% of American respondents recognizing the bug, compared to 11.3% of non-Americans.

Here’s how the familiarity rate varies by sub-region:

Overall, respondents from the Western US were more familiar with That Bug than were respondents from Eastern states, with the Pacific West having the highest percentage of respondents who recognized the bug (45.8%) and the Mid-Atlantic having the lowest among Americans (22.8%), although the familiarity rate among Mid-Atlantic respondents was still twice that of non-Americans (11.3%).

 Tumblr vs Reddit Comparisons

A significantly higher percentage of the Tumblr sample was familiar with That Bug (34.8%) compared to the Reddit subsample (17.3%), with this pattern extending to both American and non-American respondents:

I suspect this difference is likely due to the tagging and reblogging features of Tumblr meaning that the survey was likely seen by a greater proportion of “bug enthusiasts” on Tumblr compared to Reddit.

In support of that explanation, the Tumblr comments about the bug were more likely to be positive rather than negative in tone (47:34), while the reverse was true for the Reddit sample (16:6; a statistically significant difference, fwiw, at χ2 = 6.55, p = .01):

From this, I would suspect that the Reddit familiarity rate is probably more accurate to the general population, although I would suspect that it is probably still inflated from the “true” percentage, since respondents had to opt-in to filling out a survey about a bug to be counted at all.

The Reddit/Tumblr subsamples were otherwise generally pretty similar to each other.

Conclusions

In sum, That Bug is relatively obscure, with only around a third of Americans and a tenth of non-Americans recognizing it. Among those who did recognize it, That Bug was most widely known as a “Jerusalem cricket”, but its other names saw some use, too. “Potato bug” was the most common term for it among Californians, for example, while New Mexicans preferred “Child of the Earth.” And, of course, our esteemed Rhode Island representative went with “sand cricket” ~

Personally, I’m from the Western US, and before doing this project, I’d never heard of the term “potato bug” used for anything other than roly-polies (and, based on the comments, I’m not the only one with this experience). It’s fascinating to me how these common names can refer to wildly different things, without people even necessarily being aware of the potential alternate meanings!

I do wonder, however, whether a subset of respondents might have selected “potato bug” because they’d heard the term before, but potentially had (without their knowledge) only heard it being used to refer to a different kind of bug entirely. I don’t have a great way to test that currently, but I am considering doing a follow-up survey about that some day.

Anyway, that’s all for now! Thanks again to everyone who completed the survey or who read any of this! <3

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Other Stuff

Wave 1 results post

Familiarity definition: Respondents were considered “familiar” with That Bug for the purposes of this analysis if they did NOT select the “I am unfamiliar with this bug” option AND provided a valid name for the bug, either by selecting one of the provided options OR providing a specific name in the “other” text. Overly vague responses (e.g., “cricket”) or names of other bugs (e.g., mole cricket) were not considered valid names for this purpose.

Sample details: Here’s a couple of tables with the sample broken down by source and region. The non-parenthetical numbers are the total responses and the parenthetical numbers are the number of “familiar” respondents.