Cicada Facts Lightning Round
As a science journalist, you are supposed to wow your audience with facts. This is especially important now as the pandemic risk begins to wind down in the U.S., so that you, the reader, have interesting things to tell friends at a dinner party or to yell drunkenly into a stranger’s ear at the club, otherwise known as the human version of the cicada mating call. Weird facts are the difference between society and anarchy.
To ease you back into having a social life, please feel free to use these cicada facts to break the ice at future gatherings. (You may also continue to not gather socially and hang with your cat, who I am sure would also appreciate hearing these facts.)
Cicadas are so loud, they could be fined for noise violations in Baltimore.
Cicadas can get hopped up on a psychedelic fungus that makes their asses fall off—but they can still continue to bone even after that happens.
Bob Dylan wrote a song about cicadas after being inspired by hearing them while receiving an honorary degree at Princeton in 1970 (that’s a bonus Bob Dylan fact).
The song is “Day of the Locusts,” but cicadas are not locusts. This makes Bob Dylan a liar. I knew there was a reason I always hated him.
Though this year’s relatively cool spring has slowed the emergence of Brood X in some places, climate change will likely mean cicada broods emerge sooner, not later. In fact, some members of Brood X emerged in 2017, four years ahead of schedule. It could eventually wreak havoc, leading to new broods.
