13 year Cicadas coming soon to a neighborhood near you!

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A cicada is an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many remain unclassified. Cicadas live in temperate to tropical climates where they are among the most widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to their large size and unique sound. Cicadas are often colloquially called locusts, although they are unrelated to true locusts, which are a kind of grasshopper. Cicadas are related to leafhoppers and spittlebugs.

Cicadas are benign to humans in normal circumstances and do not bite or sting in a true sense, but may in fact sting after mistaking a person’s arm or other part of their body as a tree or plant limb and attempt to feed. Cicadas have a long proboscis under their head that they use for feeding on tree sap, and if they attempt to inject it into a person’s body it can be painful, but is in no other way harmful. This sting is not a defensive reaction and should not be mistaken for aggression; it is extremely uncommon, and usually only happens when they are allowed to rest on a person’s body for an extended amount of time.

Cicadas can cause damage to several cultivated crops, shrubs, and trees, mainly in the form of scarring left on tree branches while the females lay their eggs deep in branches. Many people around the world regularly eat cicadas; the female is prized, as it is meatier. Cicadas have been (or are still) eaten in Ancient Greece, China, Malaysia, Burma, Latin America, and the Congo. Shells of cicadas are employed in the traditional medicines of China.

So that’s their background and now here is the latest on Cicadas 2011:

We saw their parents in 1998; now the 13-year cicadas are emerging again from underground. Get ready for raucous mating calls and shells everywhere, advises the Herald-Review of Decatur, Illinois. (The 13-year cicadas stay mostly in the South but hit parts of Illinois and Indiana.) “They are out in Tennessee. Out and flying in Georgia,” says an expert. But the population could be smaller than last time, he notes. “The broods have tended to be a little bit less each time they come out. That’s probably because of how we’re cutting down trees.”

Soon before they appear, the insects push up little piles of mud, says an entomologist. “When you see those little mud chimneys everywhere, we’ll have a huge emergence soon.” After a few weeks, the insects will return underground. In the meantime, should you fear for your trees? “If you had young trees, that would be a concern,” the expert says. But don’t get too worried: The creatures “have been around for thousands of years, and the trees have also.”

What do you think?  Do you like Cicadas?  Let us know in the comments section.

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About Post Author

Carol Bell

Carol is a graduate of the University of Alabama. Her passion is journalism and it shows. Carol is our unpaid, but very efficient, administrative secretary.
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12 years ago

Extraordinary creatures….amazing creatures!!!

After 13 years of ‘them’ getting ready I suspect even the most brain dead human would be prepared for…..

oh yeah…trailor trash….Irish Pikeys…Somalian Muslims….

I get your point…some bits of humanity wouldn’t have a scooby…

…my immediate neighbours spring to mind….

oh well…humanity gets what it deserves eh?

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