Posted on 05/10/2021 9:07:24 AM PDT by dynachrome
Every 17 years the billions of constituents of Brood X tunnel up from their subterranean lairs to spend their final days partying in the sun. This generation got its start back in 2004, when Facebook existed only at Harvard University and Friends aired its last episode. The newly hatched cicada nymphs fell from the trees and burrowed into the dirt. They have been underground ever since, feeding on sap from the rootlets of grasses and trees and slowly maturing. All of that preparation has been leading up to this moment when they surface in droves—up to 1.4 million cicadas per acre—to molt into their adult form, sing their deafening love song and produce the next generation before dying just a few weeks later.
To early European settlers in North America, the sudden appearance of these insects in large numbers brought to mind the locusts of biblical infamy. But whereas locusts are grasshoppers that form giant swarms and travel long distances, devouring crops on a devastating scale, cicadas belong to an entirely different order of insects. They do not swarm and are poor fliers, typically traveling no more than several hundred feet. Moreover, they pose little threat to plants because they do not eat plant tissues. Females do make incisions in twigs for their eggs, which can weaken saplings but not mature trees and shrubs.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
“Brood X” would be a good label for the next human generation.
We have already gone through Boomers, Gen. X, Millennials and ‘Other’.
They’ll probably freeze here.
Within days people will be going nuts from the sound.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun....................
Not me........................
After hiding in the basement for 17 years now they are emerging to scream, breed and die. Other than breaking windows it sounds like an insect Antifa.
Grew up in Bama. Love the sound. I missed it when I was abroad.
This reads like the current state of the corporate conservative movement.
I hear them every day, 24/7/365!......................
Are you a guy now?
I already have tinnitus, so I don’t think the cicadas will bother me any.
😆
I lived most my life out west, where we don't get the cicadas. Never so much as heard one in 36 years of life, and then I moved to WV for a few years. That nonsense noise about drove me batty. I'm so thankful to be back home in Colorado where I don't have to listen to that anymore.
I remember them well....like a cheap horror movie soundtrack
It’s cold as F here for may
Usually when they come out it’s hot as S
I live on a meadow hilltop now I won’t hear them like I did then when I lived in a hollow in green hills section Nashville where it was loud like a nightime jungle cacophony
Should be good for car wash biz
105.9! I used to shoot them with my rubber band gun when I was a kid.
Me too.
I hear them every day...
David Attenborough’s ‘A Perfect Planet’ has a section on it. The whole series is a visual treat.
Every few years, they promise "the big one, Lizabeth" but it's consistently a dud.
Maybe this year. It's a hell of a spectacle when it happens.
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