After being underground for 17 years, Illinois will soon be the site of an unavoidable emergence of billions of periodical cicadas that are set to emerge from the ground across the state in the coming months.
While their noise and presence will be undeniable, another question about the bugs has emerged: do they pee?
In rather unfortunate news, the answer is yes.
According to Dr. Gene Kritsky of the School of Behavioral & Natural Sciences at Mount St. Joseph University, cicadas drink as adults to stay hydrated and will squirt fluid at potential predators.
Not only are humans seen as possible predators to some cicadas, but other animals such as birds and squirrels could be subject to the defense mechanism, Kritsky said.
Kritsky added that both periodical and dog day cicadas squirt fluid at potential predators.
As for why the emergence is happening this year, their emergence is a phenomenon unique to cicadas.
“They’ve been underground for 17 years,” Allen Lawrance, associate curator of entomology at the Peggy Notebart Nature Museum in Chicago, said. “They have a synchronized emergence where they all come out at the same time … it’s going to be pretty exciting.”
But it’s not just the 17-year cicadas that are expected to crawl up from the ground. According to Lawrance, two groups of cicadas — one known as Brood XIII, the other as Brood XIX — will surface at the same time in Illinois, creating a rare event that hasn’t happened for 221 years.
Brood XIX will emerge “all across Northern Illinois,” while Brood XIII will be in the southern part of the state, Lawrance said, with some parts of the state seeing both. And while different broods of periodic cicadas typically emerge most years across different parts of the U.S., it just so happens that this year, the crown belongs to Illinois.
“We’re at the center of the explosion this year,” Lawrance said. “It’s pretty rare to have two broods — one of 17-year cicadas, one of 13-year cicadas — emerging at the same time in an area where they overlap a little bit.”
How loud will it actually be?
Periodical cicadas are smaller and different in color than the annual “dog-day” cicadas Illinois sees in July, Lawrance said. Periodical cicadas don’t bite or sting, and they’re harmless to humans, animals and most plants, Lawrance added.
But they are noisy.
Brood XIX specifically, which will primarily be in the Chicago area, is expected to be a “pretty loud one.”
“Think of it like a chorus,” Lawrance said. “The more voices you have, the louder the sound. And this brood that emerges in Chicago is known to be a pretty dense group.”
An article from the University of Illinois Extension stated that the northern Illinois brood, set to emerge in late May 2024, has a reputation for being the “largest emergence of cicadas known anywhere,” due to the brood’s size.
“During the 1956 emergence, [epidemiologists] counted an average of 311 nymphal emergence holes per square yard of ground in a forested floodplain near Chicago,” the article said. “This translates to 1½ million cicadas per acre. In upland sites, they recorded 27 emergence holes per square yard, translating to about 133,000 per acre.”
In 1990, “there were reports from people in Chicago having to use snow shovels to clear their sidewalks of the dead cicadas,” the article went on to say.
According to Lawrance, the “singing” — a form of communication, and a mating call — from such a large group will sound like an “endless hum.”
“You’ll just hear kind of a continuous droning sound in the background,” Lawrance said. “They have this little organ that vibrates really fast. Think of it like shaking a piece of metal, or something like that. And then they have those air sacs behind them to amplify it, just like a violin.”
What are the cicadas doing underground?
For the past 17 years, billions of cicadas from Brood XIX have been living underground, tapping into fluid from plant roots,…
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