Cicada Safari

January 11, 2024 4:29 AM

It is not common to have a dual emergence between Broods XIII and XIX. They occur once every 221 years and the last time these two broods emerged together was in 1803.
posted by cupcakeninja (60 comments total)

This is interesting! I almost never SEE cicadas though, in Illinois, until the end of the season when they are dying. It seems like they'd be hard to photograph?
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:13 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

I, for one, welcome our new Magicicada overlords.
posted by chavenet at 5:14 AM on January 11

So loud! Like, you can't think when outside and wonder why. Also, my kids like to hand unsuspecting me the carapaces, and I'm cool, but, ugh, not that cool.
WE JUST DID THIS!
posted by atomicstone at 5:14 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

• Pesticides are not effective at controlling periodical cicadas. They are not pests and do not need to be killed.

This was written by a cicada.
posted by DigDoug at 5:16 AM on January 11 [46 favorites]

MetaFilter: the adults were all eaten by predators and no singing and mating occurred
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:18 AM on January 11 [21 favorites]

This is so cool! Periodical cicadas AND a total solar eclipse in the same year; how lucky can you get!
posted by TedW at 5:20 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

tiny frying pan, I have managed to photograph cicadas a couple times, but indeed late in season, when they are just chilling on tree trunks or whatever. I did once have a close encounter with an early-season cicada who tried (very tenaciously, I might add) to perch on my nose, but that did not result in a photograph.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:21 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

And I see that there is an area in central Illinois where they may overlap some. May need noise cancelling headphones this summer when you go outside.
posted by TedW at 5:21 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

This is so cool! Periodical cicadas AND a total solar eclipse in the same year; how lucky can you get!

Please see Exodus chapters 7-10
posted by DigDoug at 5:31 AM on January 11 [65 favorites]

BROOD v. BROOD: ULTIMATE COMBAT NOISE POTENTIAL!!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:33 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

More cicada info cam be found at Cicada Mania; unfortunately my previous go-to cicada website, magicicada.org, seems to no longer exist.

If you are interested in seeing and photographing regular cicadas (which are around every summer) I have found that in the morning after a rain they will climb out of the ground (leaving a distinctive round finger-sized hole) and find a tree, building, or other vertical surface to shed their skin on and emerge as an adult. It takes about 2 hours for them to fully emerge and take on their adult appearance; when they first shed their larval skin they are pale white with tiny, shriveled wings.
posted by TedW at 5:34 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

Please see Exodus chapters 7-10

I have a lot of tree frogs near my house too; should I be concerned?
posted by TedW at 5:35 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

It takes about 2 hours for them to fully emerge and take on their adult appearance; when they first shed their larval skin they are pale white with tiny, shriveled wings.

How dare you put my morning routine on blast
posted by phunniemee at 5:43 AM on January 11 [50 favorites]

My mother sent me a video about how EVERY 17 and 13 year brood synchs up this year and the WHOLE COUNTRY will be BLANKETED in cicadas and I was impressed that this was presented in an appreciative tone rather than an apocalyptic one, but having just gotten my general cicada education for Brood X's 2021 emergence, I was pleased to be able to maintain my track record as a social media wet blanket without additional research.

Godspeed, central Illinois. Rumor has it cicadas are kinda tasty if you catch them before the carapace hardens.
posted by EvaDestruction at 5:43 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

It seems like they'd be hard to photograph?

My experience is the opposite. Maybe I have more around me, but they're incredibly stupid and will fly into anything and everything when trying to mate. Flying might be an exaggerated term, it's more like falling while screaming in terror.

I had this guy literally crash into my forehead while I was sitting in the driveway one evening. Then again he's a XIII Straggler so maybe they're just always late to everything.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:45 AM on January 11 [9 favorites]

unsurprisingly peoria is the site of this year's anime sound designer conference
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:47 AM on January 11 [9 favorites]

I almost never SEE cicadas though,

Oh god, I'm moving to wherever you are, because when the big broods erupt here in SW Ohio, they are EVERYFUCKINGWHERE. Tree trunks look like they're alive because they are covered in cicadas. They fly into everything, you can HEAR YOUR CAR TIRES CRUNCHING THEM when you're driving.

I hate them. I hate them so much. They bring out a primordial terror in me that I cannot explain. I didn't know this was a big brood overlap year and now I'm seriously thinking of getting the fuck out of the country during it.
posted by cooker girl at 6:25 AM on January 11 [6 favorites]

Okay, looking at the map, I'm good. Thank the insect overlords.
posted by cooker girl at 6:26 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

It seems like they'd be hard to photograph?

We often find adult cicadas moulting from from their nymphal shells on the lower parts of trees during emergence. Easy to photograph then, and really neat to watch them slowly pump up and dry out and harden their wings, which start off as two tiny shrivelled-up masses after moulting.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:28 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

TIL:

Periodical cicadas are best eaten when they are still white, and they taste like cold canned asparagus.
posted by misskaz at 6:54 AM on January 11 [5 favorites]

Did my dog write that?
posted by phunniemee at 6:55 AM on January 11 [19 favorites]

As a resident of Champaign, Illinois, where the two broods OVERLAP, I am friggin legit excited for this coming summer. Gonna field record the shit out of it.
posted by daisystomper at 6:56 AM on January 11 [10 favorites]

It's weird how they follow some state lines on the map. What's going on there?
posted by clawsoon at 7:14 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

I am not a scientist, but I know that many border lines (state, country, etc.) follow natural features that I would expect to serve as natural dividing lines. Hard for some species to migrate across a mountain range, or the landscape around a given river might not have enough of the right kind of foliage to support migration, that sort of thing. And also, some political boundaries have no natural correlation with ecology, or the given natural feature is not a barrier and the political boundary is a problem for local or migrating animals.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:18 AM on January 11 [4 favorites]

I am HERE for this! I'll be making several day trips and/or camping trips to find the best natural areas of overlap. Nothing out there conveys the shear power and beauty of nature in quite the same way as a forest glen made deafening by the roar of millions of voices crying out at once, rising and falling in endless variation but never straying from the main theme.

And yes, nature abhors a vacuum, we won't let all that food go to waste. Native American peoples have been eating cicadas forever ; there's even a nice modern pamphlet on various methods of collecting and preparing them. Entomophagy is one of the best ways to fight climate change and increase global food security according to the FAO, so give it a try!
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:21 AM on January 11 [4 favorites]

I like cicadas just fine but looking at the map, daaaaang, Illnois. You will be infested.
posted by Kitteh at 7:23 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

pronounced KICK-uh-dah
posted by glonous keming at 7:24 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

We often find adult cicadas moulting from from their nymphal shells on the lower parts of trees during emergence.

I see that, but only a couple a year. Still see the big guys when they're dying or half eaten by birds. Otherwise only hear them, which is fine by me. Always amazed at how loud but I look at the tree and see nothing.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:25 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

It is not common to have a dual emergence between Broods XIII and XIX. They occur once every 221 years and the last time these two broods emerged together was in 1803.

I'm forgetting which Lovecraft story begins with this sentence...?
posted by gwint at 7:26 AM on January 11 [9 favorites]

It seems like they'd be hard to photograph?
They're about the only wildlife I can consistently get good photos from. Helps that there are so many.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:28 AM on January 11

I am not a scientist, but I know that many border lines (state, country, etc.) follow natural features that I would expect to serve as natural dividing lines. Hard for some species to migrate across a mountain range, or the landscape around a given river might not have enough of the right kind of foliage to support migration, that sort of thing.

I was assuming something like that, too... so what's going on with the hard cutoff at the Illinois/Indiana border?
posted by clawsoon at 7:29 AM on January 11

It's weird how they follow some state lines on the map. What's going on there?

So, some of that is political boundaries loosely following natural boundaries. And it's not just rivers and mountains. I assume you're talking mostly about the IL/IN border, which is most striking in the map at Cicada Safari. Even though that line is just a straight line political border, it does happen to also reflect a split in ecoregions, for part of the distance at least.

Another issue that pops up is also political. These maps all depend on sampling effort and data availability. Idk if anyone has ever heard of IN being called the TX of the north, or the Middle Finger of the South. But for whatever reasons, you'll see their data being missing or lower quality in lots of national maps of plant and animal distributions. The eastern TN border is probably mostly just the smokey mountains.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:30 AM on January 11 [12 favorites]

It's a banner year here in La Pampa for cicadas also. We're in the middle part of summer and they are so loud that it hurts your ears to stand under a tree. Never heard so many here before, and the ground is littered with wings - they feel like plastic and I told my kids that they are fairy wings. A big mistake as we now have a growing pile of what are actually dead bug parts in the 7 year old's bedroom.
posted by conifer at 7:34 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

Since no one has mentioned that moles find emerging cicadas a veritable 24/7 all-you-eat buffet, if you're in the map for this you can expect to find near-surface mole activity peaking ahead of emergence ......
posted by thecincinnatikid at 7:45 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

Did my dog write that?

there is a reason why they make mouse buttons with a clicker
posted by MonsieurPEB at 7:46 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

And I see that there is an area in central Illinois where they may overlap some

This is so cool! Periodical cicadas AND a total solar eclipse in the same year; how lucky can you get!

Sadly the area where the two broods overlap isn't the area where the 2017 and 2024 paths of totality overlap, which is also in Illinois but further south.
posted by madcaptenor at 7:57 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

Periodical cicadas are best eaten when they are still white, and they taste like cold canned asparagus.

I'm legitimately having trouble imagining what they could possibly taste like when they are not at their best -- maybe more like cold canned asparagus?
posted by The Bellman at 8:32 AM on January 11 [7 favorites]

on the one hand people in regions that get cicadas have every reason to be infuriated by their incessant noise and tendency to idiotically blunder around in search of something or someone to become a messy suicide-splatter on but on the other hand they're an invaluable tool for teaching cs students about hash collisions
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:47 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but Chicago is experiencing the dual cicada emergence
posted by credulous at 9:11 AM on January 11 [4 favorites]

Idk if anyone has ever heard of IN being called the TX of the north, or the Middle Finger of the South. But for whatever reasons, you'll see their data being missing or lower quality in lots of national maps of plant and animal distributions.

We're not good at, uh, things. Often on purpose.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:25 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

When there was a large brood hatching in Illinois when I was in 7th grade, my science teacher promised us extra credit if we brought cicadas in, if we ate one (cooked), and if we ate one raw. I didn't see any live cicadas near my house, and I wasn't brave enough to eat one raw, but I did eat a cooked one. My teacher sauteed them up in a skillet on a burner in the science lab. It was crunchy, and tasted reminiscent of burnt popcorn. That could have been an over-cooking on my teacher's part, but it wasn't the worst thing I've eaten. (Maybe not even the weirdest - I've also had turkey testicles.)
posted by hydra77 at 9:28 AM on January 11 [4 favorites]

When I was a little insect loving child, I used to take the perfect spikey legged molt shells from tree bark and put them, velcro like, on the dresses of girls at church, who absolutely did not appreciate their geometric beauty the way I did. In retrospect that was very rude, sorry to everybody thus affected!
posted by foxfirefey at 9:30 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

Ugh, ya'll can have your extra Eastern cicadas.
We have Western cicadas that look like the same thing to me. Here's one from my backyard being measured on the bug-o-meter. Fortunately, we also have the Idaho specialist Cicada Killer Wasp. Hurray!

Even worse than cicadas are the dang Mormon crickets. They get so bad they need to be scraped off the highways with a motor grader.

Fortunately, there is also an Eastern Cicada Killer Wasp with a pretty wide range. CK Wasp females have a painful sting, but are fairly passive unless disturbed. After stinging cicadas, they drag the bodies underground into their burrows. Very tidy little buggers, and it gets rid of the evidence.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:44 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

Fun fact: Copperheads love cicadas and will do a bit of climbing to reach them. (do not fear your local venomous snake. Give them distance and respect, but fear not).
posted by Twain Device at 9:46 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Aw, I'm generally very happy with our move to the PNW from more easterly climes, but I'm kinda sad we'll miss out on this. Between that and the eclipse, I kinda wish we'd waited just one more year.
posted by solotoro at 10:24 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

I'm a fan of cicadas and cicada wasps. I'll definitely be buying tickets to this tour. I love seeing American Kestrels munching on cicadas like they are burgers and I enjoy that Cicada Wasps tend to be found around children's playgrounds and freak parents out because they are huge wasps! I still haven't seen one dragging a cicada into a hole yet but I am watching for it!

Since no one has mentioned that moles find emerging cicadas a veritable 24/7 all-you-eat buffet, if you're in the map for this you can expect to find near-surface mole activity peaking ahead of emergence ......

Great news as we have Great Horned Owls nesting in Lincoln Park this winter. Food for them all to stick around!
posted by srboisvert at 10:32 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

I live in TN and am moving away in May, and am kind of excited that I won't miss this. I think cicadas are darling.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:01 AM on January 11

I never knew how much I loved cicadas, or locusts as we call them, until we moved to Britain, where but for a very small population in Hampshire, there are none. Summer was suddenly silent in a way that I had no really realized was possible, and this silence helped lead to homesickness.

The songs of the cicada, whenever they pop up in animé, instantly make me feel a bit more drawn into the story.

I will never not appreciate and love their presence and their songs.*



* Posted posthumously after a giant cicada ate the poster mistaking him for an avocado leaf.
posted by Atreides at 11:12 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

My mother sent me a video about how EVERY 17 and 13 year brood synchs up this year and the WHOLE COUNTRY will be BLANKETED in cicadas

How does that work? Is there not some brood of 17-year cicadas emerging alongside some brood of 13-year cicadas every year?

The lowest common multiple of 13 and 17 is 221, so there are 221 ways for a 17-year and a 13-year broods to pair up, which means that any specific pair of 17-year and 13-year broods will indeed emerge together only once in 221 years. But unless broods XIII and XIX are both anomalously large, I don't see why this particular pairing is notable for blanketing purposes.
posted by flabdablet at 11:40 AM on January 11 [2 favorites]

We do have Eastern Cicada Killers, which are pretty much the same as the Western, unless you're super close and well trained in wasp ID. But I'm not sure if we can expect a bumper year for them or not. First, the generation doing the hunting is already born, sleeping for the winter. And they only have one generation per year, so it would be 2025 when they boom. Except, they don't emerge until July, aiming to feast on the yearly "dog day" cicadas in August. So unless any of them wake up early in May, they will sadly miss out on the fun.
posted by SaltySalticid at 11:41 AM on January 11 [3 favorites]

But unless broods XIII and XIX are both anomalously large, I don't see why this particular pairing is notable for blanketing purposes

Based on my extensive Wikipedia research: "The northern Illinois brood, which will emerge in late May 2024, has a reputation for the largest emergence of cicadas known anywhere. ". That's Brood XIII, the 17-year brood expected this year. But that's from a University of Illinois web site. The perhaps more neutral National Park Service says Brood X is bigger, although maybe that article is DC-centered?

Brood XIX, a 13-year brood, is sometimes called the "Great Southern Brood" but I can't find any sources saying that it's particularly big.
posted by madcaptenor at 11:56 AM on January 11 [1 favorite]

"It is easy to tell male cicadas from female cicadas. To do so turn the cicada over: the female will have a groove in which is found the ovipositor; the male’s abdomen will terminate with a square shaped flap". Bug scientists are quite the lot, the proper thing to do with a cicada is to put it back on the tree, fence post or whatever it fell off of.

It seems especially cruel to turn over cicadas - because they clearly struggle so much to get back on their feet. I often find nymphs slowly crawling on the ground - just making their way over to something tall enough to climb.

I like them, so I help them on their journey. I am especially fond of the annual who often have lovely green coloring, my yard is filled with the Swamp Cicada and a large tree out front is popular with the Dog Day. A genuine treat is the orange bumbler Giant Grassland Cicada, who are especially terrible at flying. These brood bugs are mostly black with red eye.

Mostly I can't believe I've been living here for 17 years. The local ag extension has a more detailed map of the impending chaos(pdf) in the central valley of the state.
posted by zenon at 12:16 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

I worked at a pizza place in college that featured a cicada pizza the last time there was a big emergence...until the health department told them they couldn't do it anymore.
posted by schyler523 at 1:35 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

The brood that happened here in eastern Pennsylvania, a few years ago, was an amazing event. I was living in the woods at the time. The cicadas were so numerous, so far and wide, that the forest pulsated. It stopped sounding like cicadas, and was sounding like some mechanical something.

So weird. You could hear it near, and hear it far. You could even hear it, in your car!
posted by Goofyy at 3:03 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

How does that work? Is there not some brood of 17-year cicadas emerging alongside some brood of 13-year cicadas every year?

Not every year, no. There are 3 active 13-year broods and 12 17-year ones. If I've done the math right, 2026 will see no periodical cicada emergences and the next multi-brood year is 2037, with Brood XIX again for the 13s but with Brood IX of the 17s.

And even if every single periodical brood was to magically align, they'd hardly infest the entire country. This is a solidly east-of-the-Rockies phenomenon.
posted by EvaDestruction at 3:42 PM on January 11 [4 favorites]

Getting a lot of buzz, huh?
posted by Ideefixe at 3:56 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

There are 3 active 13-year broods and 12 17-year ones.

Ah! That makes more sense. Thank you.

How many active broods were there back in the 1890s when the numbers were first assigned?
posted by flabdablet at 10:25 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

I remember cicadas from a summer I spent in Kansas in 1966 where it was so hot we had only the screen door closed. There was a small swarm in a bush outside it and man were they loud. It was Lovecraftian spooky to me the way they all pulsed their whines in unison which rose and fell. I can't imagine what that must sound like from a swarm to the tenth power in size.
posted by y2karl at 11:00 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

In a recent archive.org old book dive I opened the book "Insects, their ways and means of living" mostly because I thought the last name Snodgrass was hilarious (especially because it is shortened to Snodgers sometimes??) but the section on Periodical Cicadas has some great illustrations and starts out with

"Ir is to be observed, in most of our human affairs, that we give greatest acclaim to the spectacular, and, furthermore, that when once a hero has delivered the great thrill, all his acts of everyday life acquire headline values. Thus a biographer may run on at great length about the petty details in the life of some great person, knowing well that the public, under the spell of hero worship, will read with avidity of things that would make but the dullest platitudes if told of any undistinguished mortal. Therefore, in the following history of our famous insect, universally known as the “‘seventeen-year locust,” the writer does not hesitate to insert matter that would be dry and tedious if given in connection with a commonplace creature."

My favorite cicada illustrations are "Fic. 118. Transformation of the periodical cicada from the mature nymph to the adult" and the flexi nymph which is ADORABLE from "Fic. 125. The egg, the newly-hatched nymph shedding the embryonic skin, and the free nymph of the periodical cicada"
posted by burntbook at 9:00 AM on January 12 [5 favorites]

I lived in Saint Louis when there was a dual emergence in 1998, and oh gods, the noise. One brood of cicadas is loud but tolerable; two broods at once was like living full-time at a rock concert, for weeks.
posted by adrienneleigh at 8:20 AM on January 17 [1 favorite]