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The periodical cicadas which can be about to infest two components of the United States aren’t simply plentiful, they’re downright bizarre.
These bugs are the strongest urinators in the animal kingdom with flows that put people and elephants to disgrace. They have pumps in their heads that pull moisture from the roots of bushes, permitting them to feed for greater than a decade underground. They are rescuers of caterpillars.
And they are being ravaged by a sexually transmitted illness that turns them into zombies.
RARE ‘SIMULTANEOUS EXPLOSION’ OF CICADAS EXPECTED FOR FIRST TIME IN 221 YEARS
Pumps in the top
Inside bushes are sugary, nutrient-heavy saps that stream by way of tissue known as phloem. Most bugs love the sap. But not cicadas — they go for tissue known as xylem, which carries largely water and a little bit of vitamins.
And it is not straightforward to get into the xylem, which does not simply stream out when a bug faucets into it as a result of it is underneath damaging strain. The cicada can get the fluid as a result of its outsized head has a pump, mentioned University of Alabama Huntsville entomologist Carrie Deans.
They use their proboscis like a tiny straw — concerning the width of a hair — with the pump sucking out the liquid, mentioned Georgia Tech biophysics professor Saad Bhamla. They spend almost their whole lives ingesting, 12 months after 12 months.
A periodical cicada nymph extends a limb in Macon, Georgia, on March 27, 2024, after being discovered whereas digging holes for rosebushes. Trillions of cicadas are about to emerge in numbers not seen in many years and probably centuries. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
“It’s a hard way to make a living,” Deans mentioned.
Going with the stream
All that watery fluid has to come out the opposite finish. And boy does it.
Bhamla in March printed a examine of the urination stream charges of animals the world over. Cicadas had been clearly king, peeing two to 3 times stronger and quicker than elephants and people. He could not take a look at the periodical cicadas that largely feed and pee underground, however he used video to file and measure the stream charge of their Amazon cousins, which topped out round 10 toes per second.
They have a muscle that pushes the waste by way of a tiny gap like a jet, Bhamla mentioned. He mentioned he discovered this when in the Amazon he occurred on a tree the locals known as a “weeping tree” as a result of liquid was flowing down, just like the plant was crying. It was cicada pee.
“You walk around in a forest where they’re actively chorusing on a hot sunny day. It feels like it’s raining,” mentioned University of Connecticut entomologist John Cooley. That’s their honeydew or waste product popping out the again finish … It’s known as cicada rain.”
Good for caterpillars
In the years and areas where cicadas come out, caterpillars enjoy a cicada reprieve.
University of Maryland entomologist Dan Gruner studied caterpillars after the 2021 cicada emergence in the mid-Atlantic. He found that the bugs that turn into moths survived the spring in bigger numbers because the birds that usually eat them were too busy getting cicadas.
Periodical cicadas are “lazy, fats and sluggish,” Gruner said. “They’re terribly straightforward to seize for us and for his or her predators.”
Zombie cicadas
There’s a deadly sexually transmitted disease, a fungus, that turns cicadas into zombies and causes their private parts to fall off, Cooley said.
It’s a real problem that “is even stranger than science fiction,” Cooley said. “This is a sexually transmitted zombie illness.”
Cooley has seen areas in the Midwest where up to 10% of the individuals were infected.
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The fungus is also the type that has hallucinatory effects on birds that would eat them, Cooley said.
This white fungus takes over the male, their gonads are torn from their body and chalky spores are spread around to nearby other cicadas, he said. The insects are sterilized, not killed. This way the fungus uses the cicadas to spread to others.
“They’re utterly on the mercy of the fungus,” Cooley said. “They’re strolling lifeless.”
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