Upon entering a wooded trail at Ryerson Woods on a warm day, I heard a slight drone that got louder as we walked. We began to notice exoskeletons, where periodical cicadas had emerged in a painstaking two-hour process.
On one leaf, three adult cicadas faced one another, their red eyes glowing, as they remained perfectly still. Beneath them on other leaves were dozens of exoskeletons, ghosts of the adults’ former selves. Twenty feet above the ground, cicadas flew from one tree to another, all the while emitting buzzes and drones to woo females.
I sat on a bench and felt a tickle or a spray of something on my neck, looked behind me and noted at least 10 cicadas walking on the top of the bench, walking slowly to get somewhere, to do something that they innately sensed they must do.
Shells left on trees after cicadas adults emerged. (Steven D. Bailey/For the Lake County News-Sun).
The year 2024 is the periodical cicadas’ time to meet the world above ground, and they have created for four to six weeks a magical forest.
Humans I encountered while walking through the magical cicada forest wore a certain kind of smile on their faces, one of bewilderment, joy and entrancement. We were experiencing a natural phenomenon that occurs nowhere else in North America, but in the eastern United States woodlands, and only once every 13 or 17 years, depending on the location and species
Only nine of the 3,400 species of cicadas in the world have evolved to live underground for years at a time and then emerge all at once. Seven of these species are in the United States. These are the periodical cicadas we are seeing now.
They are not the annual cicadas that come out in the so-called dog days of summer. Once the periodical cicadas are gone, dead or as tiny hatched eggs fallen to the ground, then the annual cicadas will emerge in much, much, much smaller numbers. The noise they make will be nothing compared with what we’re hearing now, but it is a sound we hear every summer.
Entomologists estimated this year that more than 1 million periodical cicadas per acre would emerge in certain areas of the Chicago region, and that over time trillions or even quadrillions will have come from beneath the surface after spending 17 years underground. The phenomenon is also happening this year in southern states like Missouri, where the cicadas emerged earlier than they did in northern Illinois.
Facebook pages such as Cicada 2024, or Illinois Cicada Watch, or Chicagoland Cicada Watch are loaded with pictures of the somewhat clumsy creatures in various poses, for example resting on a smiling child’s forehead. Videos show thousands creeping up trees at one time. The loud drone or buzz has been measured in some places in the Chicago region as being 90 decibels or more.
Two entomologists from Norway flew to Illinois to experience cicada mania. Folks from other countries as well as states are flooding the Facebook pages asking where they can go see the cicadas after they land at O’Hare International Airport.
Cicadas have brought out our creativity. We’re dressing our dogs in cicada costumes. We’re dressing ourselves in cicada costumes and getting photographed climbing a tree.
We’re making cicada cookies with pretzels for wings, peanut-shaped cookies for the body, chocolate drizzled on the head and two round red candies for the eyes. We’re sipping bourbon cicada drinks, with two cherries placed on toothpicks to look like cicada eyes. We’re complaining that there are no cicadas in our neighborhood. Why not? We want some cicadas, too.
We’re wearing cicada earrings and necklaces, and telling cicada jokes, and sautéing them in warm butter for a shrimp-like feast.
The remaining shell of a periodical cicada after it emerged. (Steven D. Bailey/For the Lake County News-Sun).
Perhaps you might find all of this laughable, or going overboard, or a waste of time. Perhaps you cannot wait for all of the gazillion of the cicadas to go away, and the smell of decaying bodies to disappear.
But all this cicada mania has given me hope for nature. While some folks are complaining and saying “eww,” and asking when will they be gone, many more are embracing this experience and sharing it with others and loving it. That bodes well for the future of nature, and for science.
Folks are discovering cicadas with blue eyes and bringing them to The Field Museum to add to its collection. They’re looking for a fungus that plagues a small percentage of the cicadas, and they’re talking about cicada urine.
“During the 17th and 18th centuries, the cicadas were thought of as a plague that would bring disease, war, and other terrible events,” writes Gene Kritsky, in “Periodical Cicadas: The Plague and the Puzzle.”
Kritsky found an account written by someone living in Great Britain of the massive insect swam colonists witnessed in the New World. “There was such a quantity of … great flies which came out of holes in the ground and replenished all the woods, and ate the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers,” the colonist wrote to his Great Britain friend.
The first recorded emergence of the periodical cicadas in North America was made by the Pilgrims 13 years after they landed on Plymouth. It took about 75 years for the Pilgrims to realize that these cicadas, which they erroneously called locusts, emerged every 17 years.
As people began to take a more scientific approach to studying the periodical cicadas, “the puzzle of their biology became the focus of their attention,” Kritsky writes.
Today, we know that periodical cicadas likely emerge in large numbers to satiate their predators. “After stuffing themselves with this abundant, easy prey, predators simply get tired of eating cicadas, leaving millions of adults alive to mate and lay eggs for the next generation,” he writes.
Birds love them. In fact, a flock of Mississippi kites ventured out of their normal range to partake in the abundance of periodical cicadas.
We now know that periodical cicadas overall are harmless and can be good for woodland ecosystems.
An article in Scientific American says that during periodical cicada emergence years, we might see higher-than-usual damage to trees by caterpillars and other insects birds usually keep under control. Female cicadas also slightly damage trees by slicing into twigs to lay their eggs.
This damage rarely kills trees, but actually helps to reset the clock of trees such as oaks, according to the article. After a cicada emergence, the trees may have smaller harvests of acorns the next few years, but then 2.5 years after the emergence, a huge acorn crop will occur, which helps feed copious wildlife.
This year, we’ve enjoyed a full solar eclipse in parts of Illinois, the rare aurora borealis and now the periodical cicadas. People have made special plans to experience these natural phenomena, offering hope that a greater appreciation of nature and desire to protect the Earth might be the wonderful byproduct of human curiosity in the 21st century.
