#that bug

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.