Interesting Facts About the Cicadas

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Grouped under the family Cicadidae, cicadas are known to love both temperate and tropical climates. So, you’ll mostly find them in cities, fields, alpine areas, deserts, wetlands, forests, and on the beaches. Interestingly, they are also delicious and serve as food for families in South America, Africa, and Asia.

In this piece, we will let you in on some fascinating facts about the cicadas to get you better acquainted with these insects. Let’s get started.

Cicadas Fun Facts

1. Cicadas prefer to live under the ground and spend most of their life there.
2. The name “cicada” comes from a Latin word meaning “tree cricket”, inspired by their cricket-like noise produced during summertime.
3. Adult cicadas have a lifespan of 4 to 6 weeks.
4. Adult cicadas can grow anywhere from 0.79 to 3 inches long and come with dark-colored bodies sporting green markings.
5. Wondering how cicadas eat? They possess mouths that are shaped like a straw to help in fluid extraction from plant tissues. Their feeding activities cause significant harm to crops, as well as shrubs and trees.
6. These insects are of two basic categories, namely, the periodical cicadas and annual cicadas. You will mostly find annual cicadas appearing every one to two years around the month of July to August. But that is different for periodical cicadas that appear every 13 to 17 years anywhere from May to early June.
7. Identifying cicadas isn’t difficult. On the side of their heads, you will find two large red eyes. And on top of their heads are three smaller eyes. They also come with two pairs of wings that are transparent, as well as short antennas that sit right in front of the eyes.
8. The holes and slits on tree branches and twigs serve as laying grounds for female cicadas who can lay as much as 600 eggs, eventually hatching them after six weeks.
9. Cicadas rely on plants as their food source and love to feast on roots and stems where they extract juices.
10. Not many insects have the ability to produce as much noise as cicadas. They are categorized as one of the loudest insect species, capable of producing up to 120 dB of sound. That’s more than what you get from a rock concert and you can hear them from 0.5 miles out.
11. Where do the sounds come from? Tymbals! Males use that section of their exoskeleton to create two distinct kinds of sounds for two reasons. The first is to repel predators and the other is to attract females.

Anytime from early to mid-May, expect to witness the return of the cicadas. As of now, there have been reported sightings in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, and their emergence could run until late June. Witnessing the cicadas can be a fascinating sight even if some people tend to see it as a nuisance. In the end, it’s a spectacle that inspires awe and you will even find people who travel regularly to witness the cicadas emerge and help in mapping the insects.

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