Cricket

Unicode lists 🦗 Cricket among the bugs in the Animals & Nature group. Typical contexts are animal, bug, grasshopper and insect. Unicode also files it under orthoptera, which shows how widely it is read.

You can drop 🦗 into chats, social posts, headlines or a bio. On SmileyZone it is filed under Animals and Nature. The character has been part of the standard since 2017 (Emoji 5.0). Its code point is U+1F997.

• A single 🦗 is often enough to set the tone.
• Fits messages about animal, bug, grasshopper and insect.
• Often seen near 🪲 Beetle, 🪳 Cockroach and 🐞 Lady Beetle.

In China crickets were kept for centuries in small cages – for their song and as bringers of luck; cricket fighting is attested from the Tang period. In Japan their chirping in late summer marks transience.

In English, however, crickets means awkward silence: if all you hear after a remark is crickets, nobody responded. Memes have carried that usage beyond English.

• 🦗🪲 – Cricket and Beetle
• 🦗🪳 – Cricket with Cockroach
• 🦗🕷️ – Cricket plus Spider
• 🦗🦂 – Cricket and Scorpion
• 🦗🐛 – Cricket with Bug
• 🦗🕸️ – Cricket plus Spider Web
• 🦗🪰 – Cricket and Fly
• 🦗🐞 – Cricket with Lady Beetle

Easy to mix up with 🪲 Beetle, 🪳 Cockroach or 🐞 Lady Beetle. They sit in the same Unicode subgroup and look similar at small sizes, so it is worth checking the name before sending.