WEBVTT - Rise of the Cicadas, Part 2 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.680 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:16.800 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.759 And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, Rob, you're back. 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:21.000 You've been out of the country. 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.120 That's right. Yeah, me and the FAM just spent two 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:29.240 weeks in Japan so much fun. Highly recommend it, but 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.840 it also means that, yeah, we're back. I'm only on 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:34.440 my second day back and I'm still somewhat jet lagged, 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:39.200 So I'm going to apologize in advance for any extra 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.360 fumbles that I make today in handling our notes in 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:42.960 our recording. 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.680 What's the time difference EUS Eastern to Japan? 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:51.640 What it's like thirteen hours? I believe it's I was 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:55.160 constantly breaking my brain by pulling up the world clock 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:59.160 on my phone and figuring out exactly like where we 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.800 were and where back home was, and then all of 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.839 that's fallen apart since I've come back, and I'm attempting 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:07.200 to readjust. 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.680 But it's like an almost perfect to day night inversion. 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:15.160 Yeah, yeah, pretty much, and really was. It was easy, 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.840 easy enough to get used to it going over. It'sn't 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:20.399 just been much harder coming back. 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.560 Well, folks. If you remember from before we were out 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:26.399 for a couple of weeks, we had a kind of 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:30.200 strange but I think good scheme where we broke right 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:32.080 in the middle of a series so we could jump 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.720 back in with part two of our talk about cicadas. Now, 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:38.280 of course it's been a while, so you might not 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:40.480 remember some of the things we talked about in part one, 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:45.280 But in that episode we discussed our personal experiences with cicadas. 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.880 We talked about finding their abandoned former exoskeletons after molting, 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.520 or just finding random body parts, wings, legs, and stuff 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:57.120 like that. Here and there, we talked about how cicadas 0:01:57.240 --> 0:01:59.920 fit into the insect class as a member of the 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.800 so called true bugs, the Hymiptera, and we had a 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.400 digression on the etymological history of the word bug in 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:12.880 English referred to monsters and scarecrows before it actually referred 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:17.400 to insects. We talked about the physical characteristics of cicadas. 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:20.920 They're piercing and sucking mouthparts. They have this needle like 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.360 mouth called a rostrum, which they used to feed off 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.600 of Xylum sap from plant roots and then stems in 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:31.120 their adult stage. We talked about how they emit their 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:35.320 famous song, not by rubbing together wings or legs like 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:39.760 some other insects, but with dedicated organs called timbals, these 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:43.079 kind of corrugated drumheads on the sides of their bodies 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:47.240 that they can buckle and snap back and forth to 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:50.960 make a sound. We of course talked about their reproductive cycle, 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:55.080 with an early developmental stage taking place underground where they 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.600 feed on Xylum from plant roots, and then their emergence 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.600 as an adult into the air or above where they mate. 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.280 And then of course after they the females lay eggs 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:10.040 with this wonderful knife like ovipositor that they gouge into 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.880 twigs and soft tree branches to make little canyons for 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.519 their eggs to live in. And then finally we talked 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:20.520 about the periodical cicadas of North America that we have 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.680 here and we just recently had a big emergence in 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:28.960 our area. The periodical cicadas which emerge not every year everywhere, 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:34.400 as most cicadas do, but instead after bizarrely long periods 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:39.200 of underground development, so some go thirteen years before emerging, 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.880 some go seventeen years. And we discussed evolutionary pressures that 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.400 could have led to this adaptation. One hypothesis that we 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:49.360 talked about, and to be clear, this is not the 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:51.880 only one. There are other possible explanations in the mix, 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:53.600 and we might try to get into them in a 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.800 later part of the series. But one hypothesis we talked 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:01.760 about is that it prevents local predators and parasitoids from 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.960 adapting to cicadas as regular prey or host animals, because 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.920 once they're out, as I've read in multiple places, everything 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.960 eats them. Cicadas are nutritious, they have almost nothing in 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.440 the way of individual defenses, and there are a zillion 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.839 of them, so it's nature's buffet. But the idea is 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:25.640 if you only appear at weird, irregular time intervals, predators 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.440 can't come to depend on you, and there won't be 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:30.880 enough of them to eat all of you when you 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:32.400 do come out. So it's like if you had a 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.119 buffet that you didn't want too many people eating at 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.200 so you know, and it was delicious and you had 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:41.120 lots of food, but instead you just like were very 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:43.400 squirrely about what you're operating hours were. 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.240 Yeah, Yeah, it's the the complete inversion of what you 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.520 would expect with some sort of a business model for 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.360 a restaurant, a buffet or anything that's like bringing in bodies. 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:57.760 You know, in this case want you want your audience. 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.360 You want the consumers to be taken off guard so 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:03.640 that they can't be ready for it. They can't ramp 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:08.400 up to meet this dietary bounty that occurs again, not 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:12.200 every year, but every thirteen or every seventeen years with 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:13.800 these periodical cicadas. 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.159 But of course many species of cicadas are just annual cicadas, 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:19.640 and they do come out every year, and many things 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:20.479 do still eat them. 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.239 That's right. But that leads to the big question, right, Joe, 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.279 Lots of things can eat them, We can eat them. 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:29.400 We'll probably get into that a little bit more in 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:34.679 a subsequent episode, But can they eat us? To question 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.120 that has garnered a lot of discussion of you. 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:41.359 Yes, it's a wonderful question. It's a question people apparently 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:46.040 cannot stop asking. So if you go back through newspaper articles, 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:50.120 radio programs, all kinds of media that accompany these big 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:54.400 cicada booms whenever they happen, it seems readers and listeners 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:59.000 are always expressing concern that the cicadas will bite them 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.520 or sting them. And then maybe if people know a 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.080 bit more about their morphology, about the piercing and sucking 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.480 mouthparts rather than the chewing and tearing arrangement some other 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.440 bugs have, they might ask instead, will Cicada's stab their 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.880 needle like rostra into my veins and drain all my blood? 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:21.640 And yes, one historical newspaper article does discuss this possibility. 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.279 The short answer is no, no, no, this does not happen. 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.440 But it is kind of interesting to explore the way 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:34.479 this question keeps coming up over and over again, because 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.080 it turns out recent generations are not the first to 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.960 arrive at this question. People have been asking this for 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:44.000 a long time. So I was looking for sources on 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.279 this and I came across an article by an author 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.400 whose name always fills me with delight when I see it, 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:54.960 May Berenbaum. May Barnbaum is an American entomologist affiliated with 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.400 the University of Illinois. She has been recently and I 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:03.200 think still is editor in chief of PNAS, and we've 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:05.440 cross paths with her work a lot on stuff to 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:07.560 blow your mind because she has written a lot of 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.600 science based articles that cover I don't know, our kind 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:14.520 of beat like strange and funny questions about insects, but 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:19.000 with a scientifically informed perspective. And just one example is 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:22.040 I think we did an article of hers that was 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.920 talking about cases of bugs crawling inside people's bodies, stuff 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:30.840 like that. This particular article was called same Old Cicada Song, 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.760 and it was published in the magazine American Entomologist in 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:39.240 twenty twenty one, related to a big periodical cicada emergence 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:43.160 that year, specifically brood Now do we say brood X 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:44.080 or brood ten? 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:46.960 I mean, I always read it in my head is 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:49.360 brute x, but of course it's brood ten. 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.360 I think we should follow the Jason X convention though, 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:54.960 even though it you know, it's the tenth Jason movie, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:57.200 but everybody says Jason X. So I think it should 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.960 be brood x brude X. It is so. In this article, 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:06.520 Barenbaum talks about the long history of media stories about 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.720 emerging cicada broods, and she goes way back into the 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.440 newspaper archives and finds a story from March first, eighteen 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.880 sixty in the New York Times. This would have been 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:20.960 only nine years after the paper was founded that begins 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:27.400 as follows the locust plague to reappear this year. You 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:32.000 know that's classic headline flair all caps locust plague about 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:36.000 insects that once again harm no one. So the article 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:40.000 goes on. Mister Gideon B. Smith communicates the following unpleasant 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:44.920 bit of entomological news through the National Intelligencer. The locusts 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:49.240 or cicada septin decim will appear very extensively this year, 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.760 occupying probably a larger surface of the country than those 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:57.120 of any other year. Now a note about referring to 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:02.000 them as locusts. We talked in the last episode about how, 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:06.040 of course cicadas are not locusts. Locusts are a type 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:10.160 of swarming grasshopper, and cicadas are not even especially closely 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:14.640 related to grasshoppers. They're both insects. But cicadas again are hymiptera. 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.120 They are the true bugs. But many of the popular 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:22.640 sources from the nineteenth century that discuss cicadas do refer 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.600 to them as locusts or sometimes with other common names 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:30.640 like harvest flies. But locust is very common, and because 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.800 of course locusts are associated with threats to crops, I 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:37.320 think this sort of bleeds over that, like calling incorrectly 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:42.360 calling cicada's locusts bleeds over into this idea that cicadas 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.600 themselves are a threat to crops, which they are generally. 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:50.520 Not right, right, and making it far easier to confuse 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.400 yourself not only with accounts of actual locust based destruction, 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:59.160 but even like cultural biblical mentions of the locusts and 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:00.000 plagues of locusts. 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.320 Exactly. Yeah. So after this, barren Baum goes on to 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.760 highlight another article that appeared in The Times a little 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.360 more than seventeen years after that first one, in June 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:15.360 eighteen seventy seven, for the seventeen year re emergence of 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.599 the same brood. This article was called the Dry Cicada, 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.559 and she brings up this article as the first example 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:25.960 of a recurring theme that we'll see in a lot 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.440 of these where the author is starting to argue that 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.320 cicadas are not a threat to humans. And she includes 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.599 a short quote that was so good I had to 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:39.000 go look up the original article in full, and I'm 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:41.120 glad I did so. I'm going to summarize a bit 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:44.160 and read from some of it here. The article starts 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:46.960 off with a vivid description from the point of view 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:50.679 of a hypothetical new Yorker. They call them a townsfolk 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:55.080 visiting the rural districts of New Jersey, and it describes 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.440 the sites and sounds associated with a mass emergence of 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:03.240 periodical cicadas. It talks about their sound as similar to 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:06.960 a chorus of tree toads, or to quote the shrilling 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.200 of the railway track when the train is at a 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:13.720 distance and happens to enter a rock cutting. It describes 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:17.480 going on a ramble through the woods, seeing characteristic holes 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:19.960 in the ground as if someone had been stabbing the 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:25.239 ground with a walking stick, especially near the roots of oaks, chestnut, cottonwood, 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:29.319 and maple trees, and then finding leftover shells from cicada 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.280 moltz clutching onto the lower branches of trees like festoons. 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:35.679 And then I'm going to read a paragraph from the 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.680 article here. The author writes, quote, pretty soon one of 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:42.560 these peculiar creatures will be found, having just freed itself 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.640 from the grim, uncouth shape it has borne for so 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.360 many years. The long, transparent double pair of wings have 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:53.360 been shaken out from two limp close packed masses into 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.800 their full expanse of brittle pinions. The body takes a 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.920 darker tint, and the red eyes that distinguished this harvest 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:05.920 fly gleam brightly. The insect is fully prepared for its apotheosis. 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.560 It knows exactly what to do, and before its wings 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.320 can bear it, it begins to travel up the trunk 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.480 of any tree nearby to join the frivolous band of 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:18.679 its fellows that are making the upper air trimble with 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:24.760 their love notes. You know, theaper, the newspaper reporting style 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:25.840 was different back then. 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:30.120 Yeah, Yeah, they had a whole different ap style book, 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:30.600 didn't they. 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.600 Yeah. But anyway, so it goes on to talk about 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.200 a few other things, like how how the cicada flies, 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:38.600 it's mating, and so forth, But then finally it gets 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.560 to the question of whether that frivolous band of fellows 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.120 will kill you. So here I'm going to read again 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.920 from the article. It says, since the larva lives by 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.400 sucking the juices from roots, and the fly has a 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:56.400 large and strong sucking tube, there seems no reason why 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.440 this locust, as we call it, should not divert its 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.840 attention from the juices of plants to the red juices 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:07.760 of animals and men like the just like the large 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:11.679 horse flies before mentioned. Indeed, just as the small and 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.760 maddening mosquito itself. It seems a mere piece of luck, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.560 perhaps the result of their slow flight, or some arrangement 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:26.280 of their sucking tubes, their defective digestive their defective digestive system, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.480 or even the fact that the ancestors of the present 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.679 harvest fly have been invariably well conducted, that the Jerseymen 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.079 of this year still exists in life instead of being 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:41.680 reduced to a thoroughly pumped frame of flesh. Nothing short 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.920 of plate armor would have saved him. Or it may 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.559 be that the extraordinary parsimony of nature which leads her 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.360 to give the poor harvest fly, after seventeen or thirteen 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.920 years of underground existence, only a few weeks in which 0:13:55.960 --> 0:13:59.679 to buzz in love and deposit the connubial egg. It 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.679 may be the scantness of their allowance of paradise which 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:08.280 saves New Jersey from periodical depopulation. For if it were 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.800 not for one or more of these counteracting causes, imagine 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.520 the result of an appetite for blood aroused in the 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.720 horny breasts of these gigantic horseflies. Instead of flying with 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:22.240 comparatively harmless results about the tops of the trees, they 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.760 would descend upon the helpless jerseyman and drive him forth, 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.360 if it be possible to make that distinction with a 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:32.880 jerseyman to a foreign climb. Love the dig at New 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:34.720 Jersey residents at the end there. 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.040 Oh man, there's so much to dissect. There, so many 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:46.000 logical hurdles were vaulted over in this absolute sprint toward 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:51.040 the fear the possibility that the cicadas could just one 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:52.880 day wipe out all of New Jersey. 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:55.760 But I like that it's making the point that cicadas 0:14:55.840 --> 0:15:00.400 don't do this by just elaborating extensively on how they could. 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.840 Yeah, it's like, yeah they could. Yeah, I mean if 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:07.800 humans had xylum and not blood, if we were trees 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.800 and not mammals, then then sure, yeah, it would be 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:12.600 a dire threat. 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:18.080 So unfortunately, I feel like I think the article is 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.240 just dreaming up a whimsical scenario. But I can't quite 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.680 tell if the author is trying to argue against a 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:28.200 belief that some people actually held at the time that like, oh, yeah, 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:30.680 they'll drink your blood, and it's saying like, no, if 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.160 they did drink your blood, think how you know it 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.520 would depopulate all of New Jersey every thirteen years. I'm 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.520 not quite sure exactly what this author is trying to 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.120 respond to with this elaborate scenario, but either way, I 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.720 love it. But in any case, it is It certainly 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.320 is the case that people are concerned about the impact 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:55.080 of cicadas, both on plants and on people. Whether or 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:56.760 not they think, you know, people are actually going to 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.120 be drained of their blood, they do at least think 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.080 that cicadas are going to bite and sting them. So 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:06.000 Barenbaum finds more articles in the Times. The next one 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.280 is once again seventeen years after this last one, so 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.240 this would be in May eighteen ninety four, and it 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.880 debunks what appear to be several common misconceptions banging around 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.200 at the period. In the period, one is something we 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.680 talked about in part one that you brought up, rob, 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:24.920 the idea of prognostication via cicada wings that, like the 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.520 wa means that a war is going to happen, though 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.440 that's not really about cicadas, you know, it's just a 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:36.880 general superstition, so you know, the article attempts to address that. However, 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.200 the second misconception addressed is the idea that the cicada 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.680 can bite or sting, which the author says is not true. 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:44.480 Quote. 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:47.800 Other persons have feared that these insects may sting and 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:51.200 carefully avoid handling them, as they have no sting and 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.760 are only armed with a beak for sucking, which however, 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:59.080 is never used by the perfect fly. Such fears are groundless. 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:02.320 So we're getting a very different the perfect fly here. 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:06.480 This is like a be a tific view of the cicada. 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.399 It's like painting it in a very rosy picture. Now, 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.640 something that people do wonder they're armed with this knowledge, 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.120 like Okay, yeah, they don't have a stinger, they don't 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:20.320 have biting mouth parts. Could they stab you with the 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:24.840 beak if you threatened them? I've turned up a mixed 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.840 collection of answers on this. For example, I found an 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:33.320 older book by the Field Museum entomologist William Josiah Gerhard, 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.639 published in nineteen twenty three called The Periodical Cicada, in 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:42.800 which Gearhard addresses these concerns by saying, quote, under favorable conditions, 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:46.560 this insect could readily pierce the human skin by means 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.880 of its beak, but apparently it rarely or never attempts 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:52.280 to protect itself in such a manner. 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.560 Yeah, because again coming back to the basic evolutionary tactic, 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:02.159 here is overwhelmingtory predatory threats. You know. Again, it's there 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.159 are so many of us you cannot possibly kill and 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:07.520 eat all of us. Enough of us are going to survive. 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.640 Read right. So, Yeah, the food at this buffet wants 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.760 to defend itself. It doesn't defend It doesn't defend itself 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:17.639 by fighting back. It defends itself by being a part 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:19.840 of a mass of so much food that it cannot 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:20.560 all be eaten. 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.800 Yeah, you can't possibly get through this many steamer trays 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:28.440 of cicada. Yeah, you're out of luck. So that's where 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:32.240 they have That's where the investment is, not in individual 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:33.480 defensive capabilities. 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.879 Yeah. And so I detect in this phrasing, even of 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:39.920 this older book, that even though he's saying it's possible, 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.560 he's not aware of any examples of this happening. And 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:45.480 he's written a whole book on the subject, so it 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.399 seems like he would have come across some examples if 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.000 they were known about. He only mentions this as a hypothetical, 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.320 And most modern sources that I found that consult actual 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.040 entomologists say that as far as they know this does 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:03.000 not happen. So can a cicada beak you? I don't know. 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.000 The way I would think think about it is like 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.240 if you are handling a cicada, like it does have 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.439 a hard exoskeleton, in some parts of that exoskeleton can 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.399 be kind of pokey. So it's conceivable that one of 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:17.720 these pokey parts could give you a little scratch or 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.560 a poke, but it's not going to get you like 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:32.960 other insects would. So even though it seems quite clear 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:36.240 that the periodical cicadas of North America do not bite 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:40.080 or sting, and any kind of poke you got from them, 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:41.840 you would really have to be like sort of go 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:44.439 in for it by handling them intentionally, and even then 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:47.159 it seems like it would probably be accidental. There's just 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.720 not really anything to worry about. But I think these 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:53.439 questions are going to keep coming up because one of 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.800 the themes of me May Berenbaum's article is how writing 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:01.800 about cicadas seems to be in a constant struggle to 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:06.439 deal with myths and misconceptions that arise perpetually again and again. 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:09.880 She quotes another article from The New York Times from 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.560 nineteen thirty six by Donald Peaty, which calls the periodical 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:19.280 cicada the most misunderstood insect on our continent and talks 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.200 about how it's necessary for the federal government to issue 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.480 bulletins to people in the eastern United States to quell 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:29.840 the misconceptions. Pd writs, quote and people may at last 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.040 learn that the cicada does not eat crops, does not 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.800 sting babies. No authentic case of baby stinging has come 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.280 to hand or invade gardens. But despite the fact that 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.879 people with knowledge have been debunking this for over one 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:48.200 hundred years, it never sticks. And she cites example after 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.960 example of these articles over time over the decades, responding 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:55.520 to reader concerns that cicadas are the same thing as locusts, 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:58.119 that they eat crops in foliage, that they bite or 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:02.840 sting people, especially children, And they don't do that. I 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:05.720 mean they it's not that they can never cause any 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.879 harm to plants. They can when they lay their eggs 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.720 in the you know, the young the greenwood of some 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.080 plants that can sort of kill some of the tips 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:18.840 of stems, but they're just generally not that harmful to plants. 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.439 They certainly don't eat crops, and that they don't hurt people. 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.800 And I was thinking about this, about these recurring misconceptions 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.480 about the periodical cicadas. Of course, there are misconceptions about 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.200 all kinds of living creatures. We talk about talk about 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:34.480 them on the show all the time, but it just 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:39.200 seems they are especially prevalent about cicadas. Every time there 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:43.320 is a new, local brewed emergence, people are baffled anew 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.560 and prone to the same superstitions that we believed in 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:51.359 last time. And this struck me as very interesting because 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.680 I started to think it's almost as if the periodical 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:59.240 cicadas are preventing us from adapting to them in the 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:02.439 same way and by the same method that they prevent 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:07.119 predators and parasitoids from adapting to them by appearing in 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.200 different areas on these staggered time schedules. Do you know 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:10.720 what I mean? 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.200 Yeah, Yeah, It's like we instead of having just constant 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:18.919 news coverage or just you know, annual news coverage about 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:24.360 mass emergences of cicadas, we get you know, extra concentrated 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:28.800 news coverage every every so often. Yeah, so we have 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.560 time to sort of forget and then and then to 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:36.320 sort of grow hungry for new sensationalist headlines, which we 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:38.880 still have, you know, as we discussed in the last 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:42.000 episode that we did on cicadas, you know, we still 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:46.200 have these kind of outrageous news coverage bits that occur 0:22:46.359 --> 0:22:49.000 that seem to even if they don't double down on 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:52.760 the misinformation aspect of it, they kind of like get 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:56.720 into the gleeful, ooh bugs aspect of it that is 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.320 almost kind of like the first step in getting to 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:01.280 a they might suck my blood. 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.200 Yeah. In fact, you know, there are these like different 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:08.440 scales of plausibility in the people dreaming up scenarios about 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:10.960 what cicadas could do to them. You know, if you 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:13.640 don't know anything, it's plausible to imagine they could sting 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:15.760 or bite you. They're not going to do that, actually, 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:18.800 but that doesn't seem all that far fetched. And then 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:21.199 beyond that, you get the will they leave me a 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:23.440 thoroughly pumped husk? You know, are they going to suck 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:26.080 out all my blood? That doesn't seem all that plausible. 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:28.720 And then there's like even weirder stuff. 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:32.240 Yeah. Yeah. Gene Kritsky and what as I believe his 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:35.639 latest book, A Tale of Two Broods, dealing with the 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:40.520 latest cicada emergencies. He goes into a number of different 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:44.760