A mysterious cricket could survive one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. It was filmed walking on the hardened lava flow in Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park. The video clip comes from the five-part National Geographic documentary series, "America's National Parks."
The documentary series is narrated by Garth Brook, showings viewers the nation's most notable national parks, such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Badlands, Big Bend, and Hawaii Volcanoes. The latter, which includes Kīlauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes, both located on the Big Island, is where the mysterious cricket was filmed.
Mysterious Wingless Lava Cricket
The mysterious insect featured in National Geographic's documentary series is called wingless lava cricket (Caconemobius fori), also known as 'ūhini nēnē pele in Hawaiian. It is a multicellular organism that lives in the hardened lava flows from volcanic eruptions on the island.
Newsweek reported that the clip provided to them from the series shows a female lava cricket walking on one of those hardened lava flows. Brooks narrated that the cricket is the first creature to take up residence in the hostile landscape and needed to adapt to living in this environment.
The small cricket is just as big as the fingernail and sustains itself by consuming sea foam and scraps of decaying plants blown into its habitat. But aside from that, scientists know little about the many aspects of its life and behavior. The series' producer Anwar Mamon told the news outlet that until today, the wingless lava crickets are still a "complete mystery to science."
He said that no one knows anything about this insect, its life cycle, behavior, where it goes, or its exact habitat, which is why they are special creatures. Amazingly, they can survive in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, where oxygen is not abundant, temperatures are ridiculously high, and the volcanoes are actively spewing lava.
Scientists observed that these crickets appear on hardened lava flows as early as three months, but they mysteriously disappear when the first vegetation starts to grow in these barren landscapes.
Importance of America's National Parks
Mamon noted that America's national parks are incredibly diverse in terms of landscapes and animal habitats, and that is what their series aims to explore and share relevant human stories about them. He added that the producers want to show why these national parks are too important to the US and the world.
According to National Park Service, the first national park was born on March 1, 1872, when the US Congress established the Yellowstone National Park six months after the Hayden Expedition that saved Yellowstone from private development.
President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law that year, which states that "the headwaters of the Yellowstone River ... is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale ... and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people."
But it was not until 1916 that the National Park Service was established after President Woodrow Wilson signed an act that gave the NPS the responsibility of protecting several national parks and monuments that were previously managed by other government agencies that had yet to be established.
Today, the NPS system consists of over 400 areas from 50 states, including the District of Columbia, as well as in American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands.
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