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US braces for cicadas by the trillion as two broods of periodic insects coincide (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by MicroWave to c/news

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The last time Brood XIX and Brood XII emerged from underground at the same time, Thomas Jefferson was president

They look a little like cockroaches and have bulging orange eyes, and trillions of them are about to erupt from the earth in much of the midwestern and eastern United States. The emergence of two groups of cicadas will assemble a chorus of the insects not seen in several hundred years, experts say.

The simultaneous appearance of the two cicada broods – known as Brood XIX and Brood XII – is a rare event, not having occurred since 1803, a year when Thomas Jefferson was US president. “It’s really exciting. I’ve been looking forward to this for many years,” said Catherine Dana, an entomologist who specializes in cicadas at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “For the public, it’s going to be a really special experience.”

There are thousands of species of cicadas around the world but only 10 are considered periodical – having a life cycle that involves the juvenile cicadas living underground and feeding on plant sap for years before emerging en masse to the surface.

This year will see Brood XIX, the largest of all periodical cicada groups, emerge after a 13-year dormancy underground at the same time as Brood XII, a smaller group that appears every 17 years. The emergence will occur in spring, as early as this month in some places, and will see trillions of cicadas pop up in as many as 16 states, from Maryland to Oklahoma and from Illinois to Alabama.

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[–] wolfylow 15 points 7 months ago

Man, when we (2 Brits) lived in Sydney a couple of years ago, we unwittingly went camping during a mass cicada hatching. The cicada grubs were coming out of the ground and crawling up everything (tent, chairs, us!) to hatch.

We were 2 hopeless pommies fairly new to the Aussie bush and didn’t know what on earth was going on. Utterly freaked. Coupled with all the other crazy wildlife we encountered (stick insects the size of your forearm, lizard things the size of me!) and it’s amazing we didn’t pack up and leave. And also, I mean, the fact that half of Aussie animals can legitimately kill you.

But we stuck it out and had an awesome time. Cicadas were pretty amazing in the end - left fantastic exoskeletons (a bit like Geiger’s alien) and were deafening.