“I’m just going to tell you this straight,” says Kritsky grimly. They got me tenure.” 14 An STD makes them sex-mad – but their genitals fall off He first ate them out of curiosity, but stopped after his first Brood X encounter in 1987. “Because they are sucking on fluid from a root, they’re going to have a very green flavour,” he says. So say those who have tried, Kritsky included. Others have described cicadas being attracted to power tools and lawnmowers. In 2004, David Attenborough mimicked it by snapping his fingers – much to the frustration of a male. He wrote Day of the Locusts about hearing their “high whining trill” from the stage: “The locusts sang, and they were singing for me.” 12 They are easily confusedįemale cicadas cannot sing, but indicate interest to males by flicking their wings to make a small sound. In 1970, Dylan was awarded an honorary doctorate from Princeton University, New Jersey, in the thick of Brood X. “These guys are in your face … they’re clumsy.” 11 They inspired Bob Dylan

The largest are about 2in long, with orange-veined wings and bright red eyes. “What’s different is these guys are big,” says Kritsky. 10 They are bigįew animals aggregate at such a scale, except locusts, bees and some fish. The numbers are thought to be a survival strategy to overwhelm predators so that – no matter how many cicadas get eaten – there are still millions left to reproduce. In 2004, the maximum density recorded was 356 a sq metre. Kritsky puts the “volume” of Brood X at about 1.3 million bugs an acre.

“They are bugs of history,” says Kritsky. Every emergence since has been documented – this is the 19th. On, a minister at Pennsylvania’s oldest church wrote in his journal that “some singular flies came out of the ground” this was the first historical record of Brood X. Its prevalence in cities means it has been written about for centuries. 8 … and it’s historically significantīrood X is the largest brood of the 17-year cicadas, spread over 15 US states from Indiana to New York. Numbers 1-17 denote 17-year cicadas while 18-30 follow a 13-year cycle. In 1898, broods were assigned a Roman numeral based on their location and the calendar year when they emerge. The emergence is believed to have started across the US last week. Before 1950 in Cincinnati, Brood X would arrive on about 28 or 29 May now, on average, it arrives on about 17 May. That is being affected by warming temperatures, says Kritsky. In the years when a brood is due, the cicadas start to emerge when the soil temperature reaches 18C (65F) in spring. “What we don’t know is how they remember what year it is.” In Cincinnati in 2007, unseasonably warm temperatures followed by a freeze triggered hundreds of cicadas to emerge a year early. “That’s how they mark the passage of time,” says Kritsky. 5 Their circadian rhythms are mysteriousĬicadas are thought to have an internal clock, calibrated by environmental cues – such as changes to the flow of fluids in the tree roots. It’s not harmful, but some people wear a wide-brimmed hat to avoid it. The unexpected squirt from overhead is called “cicada rain” or “honeydew”. Instead, they live off a totally liquid diet of xylem fluid from tree tissue and roots, and release excess fluid through pee. “They don’t have chewing mouth-parts,” says Kritsky. Like aphids, bed bugs and all “true bugs” in the insect order Hemiptera, cicadas cannot eat solids (or bite people). If you can’t reschedule your wedding, you are advised to bring in big speakers – or bagpipes. Indeed, prolonged exposure could cause permanent hearing damage. That’s louder than the jets flying into Heathrow,” says Kritsky. “They are screaming at about 96 decibels. They produce their calls using organs on either side of the body called tymbals, amplifying the sound by their hollow abdomen.

Only the male cicadas sing, gathered in large numbers in trees. “Their mating call is a song of love!” 3 They are LOUD “Though I think a wedding with cicadas is much more romantic,” he says. In 20 years, he has helped 83 couples pick a date for their weddings. Kritsky says that some people take “cicadations” (vacations) to avoid the swarm. Since 2000, two more periodical species have been discovered in Fiji and India, with eight- and four-year life cycles. The long life cycles are thought to have evolved in the past 300,000 years as an adaptation to the ice age, with the cicadas living just south of the retreating ice sheets able to surface sooner. Of the 3,400 species of cicadas, just seven are periodical, spending 13 or 17 years underground before emerging en masse to mate and die.

Cicada bugs 2021