By Susan Milius
View a video of a male cricket’s calling songs
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/12546.jpg?resize=300%2C208&ssl=1)
Thanks to a kind of science reality show, evolutionary biologists are getting a reality check. The day-to-day lives of field crickets, captured on 250,000 hours of surveillance footage, are providing a glimpse into how well studies in the lab match up with life in the wild.
Much of indoor science proved applicable outdoors, but there were surprises, including a more complicated view of how the number of mates relates to the number of offspring, according to the first report on the project, appearing in the June 4 Science.