Slashdot Mirror
Swarm of Cicadas Takes Aim at U.S.
wetshoe writes "'After 17 years of relative quiet, Mother Nature is bringing the noise. 'Periodical cicadas, a species of the grasshopper-like insects best known for the scratching, screeching "singing" of the males, will emerge this May, filling forests in more than a dozen states. Almost as abruptly as they arrive, they'll disappear underground for another 17 years.' The article also talks about areas in the Mid-West where 17-year June Bugs sometimes overlap with 13-year June Bugs. I remember as a child one such time, you literally couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on them, they were everywhere. Reminded me of a biblical plague."
Cicadas are not June Bugs .
Hmmm....
--Mike--
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
Interestingly, they don't list any 13-year broods in 2004 (unlike CNN).
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
can't we talk about something a little more exciting? Like Jennifer Connelly's breasts?
Apparently what some people call "June Bugs" are rather different from what I call June Bugs.
Who here thinks that June Bugs are, in fact, these things? Because I certainly do. I'm from Southwestern Ontario, right between Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, and these bugs plague towns near their shores in the spring. But we call them June Bugs... or Fish Flies, or (rarely) Mayflies. But Cicadas are something else entirely.
Odd.
I remember as a child one such time, you literally couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on them, they were everywhere. Reminded me of a biblical plague.
Oh yeah. Remember the back in "aught 7", (BC 807, that is)? That was a doozy! I remember that as if it were yesterday... ah, the good ole days.
...the last time this brood popped up, 17 years ago. You literally couldn't walk down the street without stepping on them. You'd go for a walk and come back with several cicadas clinging to your clothes. Racoons and other animals would feast on them - we had racoons who would eat a few hundred of them and then throw up on our roof. Ugh.
Since then I've become an avid bicyclist. I'm a little worried about what it's going to be like riding a bike with these things flying around. Yum, extra protein, no need to stop for lunch.
No sig? Sigh...
Their periods are primes, w00t. CNN doesn't mention this. I guess they're afraid to intimidate the audience.
What makes this batch of cicadas newsworthy? We have them here in NJ every year. I did RTFA, just not sure what the fuss is about.....
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
That is one hot pic!
The 17-year cicadas appear, well, once in 17 years. 13-year cicadas appear once in 13 years. Note that there are no 14,- 15,- or 16-year cicadas. Why are the periods prime? YAWN (Yet Another Wonder of Nature), yo!
forgive the ignorance. So, these things take 17 years to mature or are they hybernating for that long or what?
I've lived in Northern VA most of my life and I remember the infestation in the 1950s that covered everything, killed some of our peach trees and filled the air so that you could grab them, when they flew by, and throw them into a large jar (ineffective insect control, but you felt that you had to do something). As time went by, the woods and fields were paved, the cicadas were trapped underground and their numbers declined. Now the eruptions hardly stand out from the usual cicada broods that appear annually. See, all of that development is GOOD for the environment :)!
where 17-year June Bugs sometimes overlap with 13-year June Bugs
Well, let's see. Given that 17 and 13 are both prime numbers, would that mean that "sometimes" in this context actually means "221 years"?
There are also species of bamboo that periodically produce tons of seeds to reproduce, but on the order of every 70 years. These too only do it on prime number years.
Who knows if he was right, but it is a cool theory.
"I think the U.N. is going to find that the blame lies with all the Sudanese rap music that glamorizes genocide."
check out the knockers on this chick! An entire swarm of cicadas could be perched on those things!
Considering the 17 year cycle of this news, how did computer nerds find out about this kind of thing? Before there was news for nerds, what mattered to them?
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Not sure what your grasshoppers look like, but they certainly do not look like cicadas here in the MidWest....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
Growing up in Virginia, and the Cicada hordes descended. It was absoultely revolting, you couldn't walk anywhere without constantly crunching cicadas. My friends would grab them by the wings and throw them to the sidewalk, smashing them, which was worse, because now that section of sidewalk was covered with smashed cicadas. I just stayed inside hiding from the plague. And the noise, noise noise, noise, noise (think Grinch here).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
There are also species of bamboo that periodically produce tons of seeds to reproduce, but on the order of every 70 years. These too only do it on prime number years.
It's a neat theory, and it is probably true that species with life cycles which are a prime number of years have an evolutionary advantage over those whose cycles are evenly divisible, but the advantage is slight enough that his assertion there are only species with life cycles that are prime numbers is wrong.
Quoth the article:
Most are prime number cycles (probably as a result of the advantage vis-a-vis cyclic predators you cite), but NOT ALL.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!
Behold a plague of locusts! The end is upon us!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I live in Stokes county, North Carolina (don't worry about where it is, it's not important) and we had our swarm of cicadas infest us last summer. Noisy little bugs. After they had shed their exoskeletons, though, we the ground was covered in little shells at least one inch deep.
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
I was living in tennessee when the 13 year cicadas came out.. and months before I found some of the larva tunneling up when I was digging around... and THAT was hellish, they were everywhere, and somehow, I found one with no abdomen... just the head..., and it was still flying around...
weird.
and they attack lawnmowers and lights, me and my friend shot at trees with bottle rockets.. that was fun.
yeah, my sister used to take those and play house with them with these weird little bear figurines... and would cut the heads off and "serve" them to the bear figurines as dinner to the figures.
many beetles died to my sister's little mini plastic knife.
To keep things in balance, you would tend to find that it is important that the predators can survive. To make that happen, you need 'dogs'.
It would be interesting to compare the genome of various species. I'll bet you'd find that the "dog day" cicada is the more primative genetically (ie, oldest), and the non-composite dudes have more genetic variation.
Just a theory, IANAG.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Looks like it's time to fire up the flamethrowers...
++mse61--
I can't believe that no one here has mentioned shooting them with BB guns during the summer. I never did but I saw several people do it. These things are easy to catch. You just pinch their wings between your thumb and forefinger and they can't do anything. We have green ones in Texas every year, they are the most common. (They black and yellow zig-zags on their head) From time to time I see very large brown/orange ones which only seem to come out at night. I've also seen a few solid black ones that were the size of the green ones. Once I even caught an extremely tiny one that was no bigger than a coffee bean. Each one seems to have their own special call. (Only males can call) The greeon ones in Texas have a rising and falling sequence that takes about 7 seconds. The large brown/orange ones alternate wee-oh-wee-oh-wee-oh. The solid black ones seem to have a long high pitch call. When you try to catch cicadas they will sometimes spray you with a drop of clear liquid. I assume it is either urine or reproductive juice. Males are easily identified by their sound. (Females are silent) Males also have breast plates which vibrate to make their sound. Females have none. The females end in a point, and if you flip them over they have a black line extending to the point. Males have an organ (I assume a sort of penis) that flips out from their tail end.
During the summer, you can find their shells all over the place. They emerge with their wings folded very tightly and take about 12 hours to unfold and dry.
And remember, there's nothing that a Cocker Spaniel loves more than proudly running around with a buzzing creature in their mouth followed by a loud CRUNCH.
My pet ferret loved them. He gorged himself on them. Crunch crunch crunch. About an hour later he threw half of what he ate back up. Guess he ate too many of the little crunchy critters!
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
Last summer, a lady here in Alberta accidentally dropped a tub of garlic butter outside a country general store. The lid popped off and the contents splatted onto the ground. She noticed that hundreds of grasshoppers arrived and fed voraciously on it. She stayed around to watch the action.
About ten minutes later she noticed that most of the grasshoppers were dying. I plan to try this during this summer.
NB I do not own stock in any garlic butter companies, AFAIK.
When cicadas finish mating, the male and female separate in a process where the male's genital organ literally lodges itself into the female, and is ripped off the male's body. This process kills the male; the female lives on awhile longer to dig a hole in the ground and deposit the larvae. You can easily tell dead male cicadas apart from the females, because the males will literally have a hole at the posterior end of the abdomen where the genitals used to be.
Next time you get dumped, just be glad you aren't a cicada!