BUGGED

Scientists: Piercing Sound in ‘Sonic Attack’ on Havana Embassy Could Have Been Crickets

Scientists say the high-pitched, piercing sound heard by diplomats may not have been part of the “attack” at all.

For over a year, the U.S. government has feared that their diplomats in Cuba were subjected to “sonic attacks” at the embassy in Havana, after multiple officials reported headaches, nausea, and a persistent high-pitched tone. But scientists now say the piercing sound that led experts to suspect the use of an acoustic weapon may have actually been crickets. The Guardian reports that researchers who analyzed an audio recording of the sound have argued that it’s remarkably similar to the call of the Indies short-tailed cricket. “The recording is definitively a cricket that belongs to the same group,” said Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a sensory biology professor at the University of Lincoln. “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.” This does not mean, however, that there wasn’t an attack on U.S. diplomats—but it does suggest that the sound may not have been the cause of their still-unexplained ailments. “So far as I am aware,” McGill University professor Gerald Pollack told The Guardian, “except perhaps for an occasional sleepless night, no-one has suffered ill health as a result of cricket calls.”

MYSTERY

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