The embassy in Havana cut its staff in half in 2017 after dozens of people complained of headaches, nausea and other ailments from hearing mysterious, penetrating high-pitched noises ‐ believed to be an acoustic weapon ‐ possibly from the Russians.
But a fresh analysis of an audio recording made by US personnel in Cuba revealed that the source of the piercing din is the song of the Indies short-tailed cricket, known as Anurogryllus celerinictus, a study says.
"The recording is definitively a cricket that belongs to the same group," said Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a professor of sensory biology at the University of Lincoln who participated in the study, according to The Guardian. "The call of this Caribbean species is about 7 kHz, and is delivered at an unusually high rate, which gives humans the sensation of a continuous sharp trill."
The study, by Montealegre-Zapata and Alexander Stubbs at the University of California, was published Jan. 4 on the website bioRxiv.