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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, folks, if I

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Speaker 3: sound a little bit unusual today, it is because I

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Speaker 3: am recording with a bit of a cold, yet another

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Speaker 3: respiratory infection that I believe I caught from my toddler.

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Speaker 3: And this actually, in a strange kind of indirect way,

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Speaker 3: does connect to what we're talking about today, because just recently,

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Speaker 3: it was over this past weekend, I saw my toddler.

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Speaker 3: She was running around in our living room, and I

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Speaker 3: saw her stop and reach down to pick something up

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Speaker 3: off the floor. And Rob you might remember, you know

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Speaker 3: this move from your son's earlier days. You were like,

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Speaker 3: the child reaches down to grab something off the floor,

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Speaker 3: and you have to get there first because you don't

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Speaker 3: know what the thing is and you want to prevent

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Speaker 3: the possible ingestion of the mystery substance. Sometimes it goes

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Speaker 3: straight into.

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Speaker 2: The mouth, exactly. Yeah, you need to know what has

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Speaker 2: been picked up. It could be harmless, it could be,

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Speaker 2: you know, one of the various dreaded items and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Right, so in this case, I was like, what is that?

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Speaker 3: But I got to it first, and I picked it

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Speaker 3: up and realized it was a large, transparent wing, an

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Speaker 3: insect wing. In fact, it was a wing belonging to

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Speaker 3: a cicada, just sitting there by itself on the floor.

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Speaker 3: How it got in the house, I do not know.

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Speaker 3: I guess we may have tracked it in on our

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Speaker 3: shoes from outside. But it was kind of this evocative

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Speaker 3: little clue, this mystery, like where was the rest of

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Speaker 3: the insect? No idea, but this random arthropod body part

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Speaker 3: in our house was like just a little taste of

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Speaker 3: the great cicada biomass, both alive and dead that there

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Speaker 3: was outside in the surrounding foliage.

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Speaker 2: And maybe almost a literal taste. But you got there first,

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Speaker 2: like you said.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, don't I don't know where insect body parts

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Speaker 3: factor in when it comes to like full mites and

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Speaker 3: transmitting germs. No, I have not read into that. But

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Speaker 3: fortunately it did not go in any mouths, but we

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Speaker 3: got sick.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, this will be discussing. You know, circadas are are

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Speaker 2: are good eats, so I don't know if it would

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Speaker 2: have been that bad. And also going back to our

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Speaker 2: multi part episode on dust It's like, sorry, there are

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Speaker 2: insect parts in the house, either in whole, partial or

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Speaker 2: dustified particleized formats. So it's just part of part of

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Speaker 2: our living environments. So yeah, cicadas are a regular annual

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Speaker 2: cicadas anyway, our regular feature of summer down here in Atlanta.

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Speaker 2: They're not quite out in forced just yet. But over

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Speaker 2: the weekend I ventured up into Tennessee and got to

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Speaker 2: experience the current and explosion of periodical cicadas uh and

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Speaker 2: it was pretty awesome there. I was. I hadn't been

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Speaker 2: around them in a bit, so I was a bit

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Speaker 2: surprised because they were smaller than I expected them to be,

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Speaker 2: as the periodical cicadas typically are, I'm to understand, But

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Speaker 2: they were still wonderful to observe, to listen to, and

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Speaker 2: in general, that swelling of the cicada song is just

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Speaker 2: such a regular feature of the summer, especially in the

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Speaker 2: most oppressively hot months, you know, those dog days of summer.

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Speaker 2: So this would you know, we'd definitely be talking about

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Speaker 2: the uh, the the annual cicadas in this scenario. To me,

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Speaker 2: it's always felt like that is the sound of humid

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Speaker 2: southern heat, a heat that often feels like it hits

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Speaker 2: you in waves anyway, just as that cicada song hits

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Speaker 2: you in waves sonically.

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Speaker 3: Rob, did you mention the dog days of summer, because

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Speaker 3: there is a specific cicada species known as the dog

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Speaker 3: day cicada?

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Speaker 2: Exactly, yes, And that's the that's the connection there that

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Speaker 2: they or so the late in the summer during you know,

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Speaker 2: the off like the sweatiest, hottest time, the time when

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Speaker 2: you go outside and you feel like you've landed on

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Speaker 2: mercury or something.

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Speaker 3: H also known as the heat bug.

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Speaker 2: They do like it hot. And that's another feature too.

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Speaker 2: It's like, you know, early in the morning you might

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Speaker 2: not hear them yet, and then you know, very late

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Speaker 2: in the afternoon slash evening when you dare venture out again,

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Speaker 2: their song might be dying off for the night and

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Speaker 2: so forth. So that's one aspect of just sort of

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Speaker 2: life with cicadas. But the shed exoskeleton of the cicada

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Speaker 2: has also always enthralled me as well. You know, this

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Speaker 2: monstrous little form that's left behind a kind of monster

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Speaker 2: gym that you can just pick up and you can

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Speaker 2: pocket pocket it, you can clip it onto the end

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Speaker 2: of your finger or a stick, or maybe like an

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Speaker 2: old gi Joe man's head or something. Even before I

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Speaker 2: saw nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. I love

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Speaker 2: these things, and if I find one to these days,

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Speaker 2: to this day, I will bring it up and give

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Speaker 2: it a more prominent place on the front porch. You know,

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Speaker 2: like I need to show it to my son, even

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Speaker 2: if he's he's still interested in this sort of thing,

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Speaker 2: but I still have to show it to him. I

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Speaker 2: still have to sort of like put it on display

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Speaker 2: for myself. There's just something special about finding them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. There there was a time a few

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Speaker 3: years back when my sister in law was like collecting

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Speaker 3: the the molted cicada exoskeletons, which have been named by

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Speaker 3: the way they're They're called the exsuvia or the exuvier.

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Speaker 3: These these exoskeletons after the the cicada molts and leave

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Speaker 3: leaves it behind. Yeah, you can find them all over

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Speaker 3: the place, and they are a lot of fun to collect. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they're already like pre dried out, ready to go.

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Speaker 2: There's nothing really gross about them. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 2: respect to anyone who who is grossed up by cicadas

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Speaker 2: will get into it. But well also probably probably dispel

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Speaker 2: some of the reasons, the logical reasons anyway you might

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Speaker 2: be opposed to them. But yeah, these these these are

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Speaker 2: wonderful because they're if you if you haven't ever encountered one,

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Speaker 2: and I feel like a lot most of you maybe have,

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Speaker 2: they are like full form, like there's a slit down

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Speaker 2: the back where the adults cicada has emerged, but otherwise

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Speaker 2: it's like this perfect little exoskeleton shell. It's not like

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Speaker 2: a snake skin, which you know, doesn't have like the

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Speaker 2: head of the snake on it or anything. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's it's it's not in any way like you can

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Speaker 2: you can see the full form really the exoskeleton form

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Speaker 2: of the nymph form of the cicada.

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Speaker 3: That's right, because Rob correct me if I'm wrong. But

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Speaker 3: I think most of the exuvia that you will find

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Speaker 3: these shells are the final form of the of the

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Speaker 3: young cicada, the nymph form when it comes up out

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Speaker 3: of the ground, crawls up a tree, and then it

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Speaker 3: molts and emerges in its adult form.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw one rite up even that kind of

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Speaker 2: stressed the idea that essentially what we have emerging is

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Speaker 2: the adult cicada, the adult winged cicada, but it is

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Speaker 2: still wearing the exoskeleton, hasn't like pushed off that final

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Speaker 2: molt just yet, which is kind of an interesting and

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Speaker 2: slightly grizzly and suitably alien idea to.

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Speaker 3: Give adult humans ready to vote and buy beer were

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Speaker 3: like coming out of the house still wearing their child

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Speaker 3: skin and they had to like burst out of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I figured a

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Speaker 2: lot of us have cicadas on the brain, either via

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Speaker 2: direct experience or via a lot of media coverage, So

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Speaker 2: I figured let's actually dive into them and do some

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Speaker 2: episodes on them. And I want to stress that there

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Speaker 2: will be a two week break between this Cicada episode

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Speaker 2: and the next one due to scheduling here. We're going

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Speaker 2: to do a little small summer break during which we'll

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Speaker 2: have some reruns, but we'll also have some new omnibus

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Speaker 2: episodes of Monster Fact episodes and Anamalia stipendium, so there'll

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Speaker 2: be some new content sprinkled in there. But basically there's

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Speaker 2: gonna be a little break and then there will be

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Speaker 2: more Cicada content, which I think is kind of fitting

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Speaker 2: for the cicada, because we're talking about a creature that

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Speaker 2: does go on extended breaks at times before it re emerges, like.

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Speaker 3: The god Tamuz disappears into the underworld and reappears again

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Speaker 3: later exactly. All right, Well, I'm going to start off

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Speaker 3: with some basics about cicadas as a family of insects

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Speaker 3: and a bit about their taxonomic context. So, cicadas are

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Speaker 3: a family of insects within the order Hemiptera. The order Hymiptera,

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Speaker 3: meaning half winged, contains insects such as plant hoppers and leafhoppers,

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Speaker 3: assassin bugs, spittlebugs, moss bugs, bedbugs, and aphids. The Hymiptera

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Speaker 3: are sometimes called true bugs, which I like because it

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Speaker 3: does imply that there are false bugs. And this was

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Speaker 3: a bit of a surprise to me because I always

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Speaker 3: thought of bug. The word bug as just an informal,

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Speaker 3: non scientific term that it had no criteria, and it

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Speaker 3: could be used to refer to basically any arthropod smaller

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Speaker 3: than a crab, any creepy crawley thing. In common usage,

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Speaker 3: it is that, but bug also has a specific scientific

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Speaker 3: meaning to entomologists referring to the Hymiptera insects, so as

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Speaker 3: an example of the many false bugs. The lady bug

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Speaker 3: is not actually a hymipterin it's a beetle, so it

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Speaker 3: is technically not a bug. The same is true of

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Speaker 3: many insects that have the word bug in their name.

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Speaker 3: June bugs are also not true bugs. They are beetles.

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Speaker 3: So as a side note, this got me kind of

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Speaker 3: interested in the etymology of the word bug. Where did

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Speaker 3: this confusing term come from? Well, I found a few

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Speaker 3: different sources on this. For one thing, Miriam Webster had

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Speaker 3: an interesting post on this etymological development. So the English

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Speaker 3: term bug did not always refer to an insect at all.

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Speaker 3: It did not necessarily refer to a creepy crawley animal.

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Speaker 3: In Middle English, the word bugs spelled with two g's

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Speaker 3: and an e at the end. Love that bug referred

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Speaker 3: to a monster like a hobgoblin, or to a scarecrow.

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Speaker 3: The scarecrow usage appears in John Wickliffe's thirteen eighty two

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Speaker 3: English translation of a deuterocanonical biblical text, a text that's

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Speaker 3: not used in all denominations versions of the Bible, but

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Speaker 3: it's used in some Christian traditions. It's called the Book

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Speaker 3: of Baruk and Wickliff's translation goes as a bug either

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Speaker 3: a man of ragis in a place where gordis wexen

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Speaker 3: keepeth no thing, so bin her goddess of tree. And

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Speaker 3: in modern English that would read something like as a

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Speaker 3: bug or a man of rags in a place where

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Speaker 3: gourds grow guards nothing, So are there gods of wood?

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Speaker 3: So this is a verse I think comparing idols used

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Speaker 3: in religious worship to a scarecrow in a garden, I

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Speaker 3: think the implication being that they are like both an illusion.

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Speaker 3: A common theme in Judaism in Christianity is against the

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Speaker 3: religious use of.

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Speaker 2: Idea fascinating all right, I had no idea.

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Speaker 3: So bug is a scarecrow there in the fourteenth century

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Speaker 3: bug is a scarecrow, but by the time of Shakespeare

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Speaker 3: it seems to have lost this meaning and refers to

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Speaker 3: a type of monster or spirit or specter. So consider

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Speaker 3: the line in Hamlet. Hamlet is he's complaining, he's lamenting,

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Speaker 3: and he says, oh, such bugs and goblins in my life.

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Speaker 3: That's an Act five, scene two. He's talking to Horatio.

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Speaker 3: And you can also see this use of bug as

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Speaker 3: monster in the word bug bear, which is attested since

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Speaker 3: the fifteen eighties, meaning a monster or generally a creature

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Speaker 3: or simply a notion which causes terror. I think a

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Speaker 3: bug bear is supposed to imply some kind of demon

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Speaker 3: bear or monstrous bear which frightens children.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that usage still kind of remains.

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Speaker 2: And then of course in the world of dungeons and dragons,

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Speaker 2: you have the bug bear as an actual monster and

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Speaker 2: I think sometimes playable species. So the bug bear lives on.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, bug as monster or bug as kind of

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Speaker 3: a devil. You know, it's a like a devil version

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Speaker 3: of a bear. So there seems to be a common

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Speaker 3: root of bog or bug observable in Scottish and Welsh

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Speaker 3: terms referring to terrors, devils, inspectors. You can think of

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Speaker 3: later derived terms like bogie, which seems to be it's

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Speaker 3: like a later word that has the same root, I think.

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Speaker 3: And according to the online Etymological Dictionary, some linguists have

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Speaker 3: guessed that there is a root in terms used for

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Speaker 3: a male goat. It does so like bug here as

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Speaker 3: monster shares a root with buck. So if you go

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Speaker 3: all the way back, this may come from ideas of

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Speaker 3: some sort of evil spectral he goat but that's far

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Speaker 3: from certain. So, according to the Merriam Webster etymology, by

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Speaker 3: the late fifteen hundreds the term referred to earthly insects

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Speaker 3: in some usages, particularly pest insects, and then by the

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Speaker 3: late seventeen hundred's the emerging Linaean classification system scientific terms

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Speaker 3: for taxonomizing and referring to animals that assigned the term

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Speaker 3: bug to the order Hmiptera, though of course it is

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Speaker 3: still commonly used to refer generically to little creeping things.

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Speaker 3: But how did this transition from like monster or scarecrow

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Speaker 3: to insects happen? I was reading another article, this one

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Speaker 3: for the California Alumni Association, which included interviews with a

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Speaker 3: Berkeley linguist named Jeffrey Nunberg, and this sort of made

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Speaker 3: the point that bug, originally having the association of a monster,

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Speaker 3: came to refer to insects because of their resemblance to monsters,

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Speaker 3: particularly bedbugs, which were probably the first insects to be

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Speaker 3: called bugs. Because they suck our blood in the night.

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Speaker 3: There is something kind of monstrous and awful about that.

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Speaker 3: And this type of association continues for many other uses

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Speaker 3: of English today, a lot of them have to do

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Speaker 3: with like irritation, disgust, and infestation, a computer bug, a

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Speaker 3: bugged phone line, a flu bug, bugging someone as in

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Speaker 3: bothering them. A lot of them have this kind of

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Speaker 3: conceptual association with like irritation or problems.

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Speaker 2: Interesting.

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Speaker 3: Interesting, So that was all sidebar, But I thought that

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Speaker 3: was interesting. I never knew any of that before. So

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Speaker 3: to come back to actual insects, Cicadas belong to the

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Speaker 3: order of true bugs, the Hymiptera, of which there are

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Speaker 3: probably about eighty thousand or more species. The most distinctive

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Speaker 3: body features shared by the species of Hymiptera are the

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Speaker 3: piercing and sucking mouth parts. So these insects have what

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Speaker 3: could be referred to as a sucking beak, technically known

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Speaker 3: as a rostrum. So if you want to picture it,

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Speaker 3: it is like a hinged, segmented, hollow needle. It is

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Speaker 3: used to pierce the outer layer of the food source.

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Speaker 3: And this could be a number of different things. It

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Speaker 3: could be the outside of a plant or the root

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Speaker 3: of a plant, could be the exoskeleton of an insect.

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Speaker 3: And then they're the needle pierces. And then there is

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Speaker 3: sort of a pumping organ operated by muscles that allows

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Speaker 3: the bug to suck up the liquid inside that substrate

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Speaker 3: for nutrition. Hymipterins typically inject an external digestive enzyme into

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Speaker 3: whatever they are eating to help break down starches and

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Speaker 3: proteins inside the food substrate, and then they suck that

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Speaker 3: food juice up through the hollow core of the rostrum. Now,

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Speaker 3: the hymiptera include both herbivores and carnivores, so again, this

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Speaker 3: food that they're sucking up through the sucking beak could

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Speaker 3: be a plant based liquid like tree sap or like

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Speaker 3: the xylum in plant roots in the case of a cicada,

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Speaker 3: Or it could be an animal based liquid like your

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Speaker 3: blood in the case of a bed bug, or like

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Speaker 3: the runny liquefied inside of a caterpillar in the case

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Speaker 3: of an assassin bug. In terms of other body features, many,

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Speaker 3: but not all, hymiptera, according to their name, which again

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Speaker 3: means half wing, have wings with two distinct parts, a

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Speaker 3: leathery or thickened part near the base and a thin

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Speaker 3: membrane toward the tip. But not all hymiptera are like this.

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Speaker 3: A cicadas are an exception. If you look at a

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Speaker 3: cicada wing like the one I found on my floor

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Speaker 3: the other day. They tend to have fully membranous, transparent

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Speaker 3: wings with just these vein sort of structural veins running

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Speaker 3: through them. Cicadas in particular are a superfamily of insects

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Speaker 3: within Hymiptera. The suborder they belong to is aucinorinka. There

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Speaker 3: are more than three thousand species of cicadas worldwide, found

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Speaker 3: in lots of different environments in the tropics and intemperate environments.

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Speaker 3: They range somewhat in size. The smallest cicadas are less

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Speaker 3: than an inch long as adults. The largest species, the

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Speaker 3: impress cicada, has a body length of about seven cinemi

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Speaker 3: in a wingspan of up to twenty centimeters and Cicadas

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Speaker 3: have the standard three part insect body division of head, thorax,

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Speaker 3: and abdomen. On the head, cicadas generally have five eyes.

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Speaker 3: They've got two huge, bulbous compound eyes on either side,

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Speaker 3: and then three smaller simple eyes known as o'celli, arranged

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Speaker 3: in a kind of triangle or pyramid pattern in the

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Speaker 3: middle of the head on the top.

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Speaker 2: I've always thought they were quite cute they have I

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Speaker 2: think they have kind of like cute heads slashed faces

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Speaker 2: if you will. Yeah, and the size is notable as well,

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Speaker 2: because if you are in an area where there are

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Speaker 2: lots of cicadas, they're going around doing their thing. They're

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Speaker 2: kind of oblivious to your thing, so they may bop

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Speaker 2: into you at various times and or land on your shirt.

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Speaker 2: And with the larger, I guess mainly the annual cicadas,

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Speaker 2: it's it can be like a like a large ping

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Speaker 2: pong ball hitting you, you know, it can be that

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Speaker 2: level of impact, and then they stick on there for

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Speaker 2: a little bit. Maybe they crawl into your shirt. They've

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Speaker 2: been known to freak out the occasional child or bug

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Speaker 2: adverse person.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and some cicadas in particular are kind of seem

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Speaker 3: kind of brazen, seem less threatened by large animals like

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Speaker 3: us than some other insects would be. The average adult cicada,

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Speaker 3: they've got these relatively short antennae, kind of like little

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Speaker 3: bristles on the head, and a thick, stout body with

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Speaker 3: folded wings usually reaching back beyond the end of the abdomen. Now,

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Speaker 3: I wanted to do a brief thing here on cicada singing,

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Speaker 3: because of course, cicadas are famous for the music they make.

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Speaker 3: You might call it music, you might call it noise.

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Speaker 3: The sounds they make, and in fact, cicadas are the

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Speaker 3: loudest family of insects on Earth. I was reading about

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Speaker 3: a study by Sanborn in Phillips in nineteen ninety five

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Speaker 3: that found that the average sound pressure of the mating

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Speaker 3: call of thirty different species of North American cicada was

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Speaker 3: between eighty and one hundred and six decibels. That is

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Speaker 3: incredibly loud for a sound made by insects. These noises

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Speaker 3: are often compared to the sounds made by powerful machines.

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Speaker 3: For example, I just looked up some averages of the

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Speaker 3: decibels produced by noisy things. Apparently, a riding lawnmower, if

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Speaker 3: you are sitting on the mower so like at that distance,

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Speaker 3: is about ninety four to ninety five decibels for the rider.

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Speaker 3: A motorcycle is about one hundred and five decibels. A

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Speaker 3: chainsaw in your hands might be more like one hundred

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Speaker 3: and fifteen. So, especially for their size, cicadas are almost

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Speaker 3: unbelievably loud animals.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I can pretty much sound like there are leaf

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Speaker 2: blowers or weed whackers running in like all adjacent yards

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Speaker 2: to the property on. They're just incredibly loud. But it's

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Speaker 2: even louder than that, especially if you are in an

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Speaker 2: environment surrounded by like a lot of trees forests, because

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Speaker 2: it's like the forest itself feels like it's alive. With

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Speaker 2: this buzzing again, it can feel like it's the sound

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Speaker 2: the world is making, as opposed to creatures in the world.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, cicadas can produce sounds that come pretty close to

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Speaker 3: the pain threshold for human hearing. Now, because cicadas make

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Speaker 3: these chirping and worrying sounds, you might be tempted to

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Speaker 3: lump cicadas in with other noise producing insects like crickets

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Speaker 3: and assume that they all make their sounds the same way.

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Speaker 3: But cicadas actually have a unique mechanism. Locusts and grasshoppers

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Speaker 3: usually the males chirp by rubbing their hind legs against

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Speaker 3: their fore wings. Male crickets chirped by rubbing the edges

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Speaker 3: of their wings together in this sort of like file

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Speaker 3: and scraper system like a comb a stick. And these

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Speaker 3: rubbing based systems are called stridulation, you know, causing friction,

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Speaker 3: a loud type of rubbing together. Cicadas do not use

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Speaker 3: stridulation instead. Most male cicadas have a dedicated pair of

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Speaker 3: sound producing organs called the timbals, which are ribbed corrugated

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Speaker 3: kitenous membranes on either side of the body, near the

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Speaker 3: base of the abdomen, sort of where the abdomen connects

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Speaker 3: to the thorax rob I've attached some pictures for you

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Speaker 3: to look at here. One is a close up of

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Speaker 3: a cicada showing the timbal is usually tucked under the wings,

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Speaker 3: so you might not see it that easily, but if

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Speaker 3: you move the wing to the side, you can see

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Speaker 3: this interesting little patch in the in the exoskeleton that

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Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what I would compare to, though

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Speaker 3: it does have a clear sort of corrugated appearance. It

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Speaker 3: looks ribbed.

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Speaker 2: It's like they're in a jug band and they play

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Speaker 2: like the washboard, right, but the washboard is part of

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Speaker 2: their anatomy.

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Speaker 3: They have solved it, yes, except in the washboard you

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Speaker 3: play by rubbing a stick on it, so that would

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Speaker 3: be more like a form of stridulation. That's not how

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Speaker 3: the timble works. So it's like if the washboard worked

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Speaker 3: instead by collapsing in on itself and then snapping back

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Speaker 3: into place.

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Speaker 2: It's like, I want to compare it to some there's

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Speaker 2: some sort of like a fidget toy of some sort

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Speaker 2: that I'm half imagining here.

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Speaker 3: That you're thinking of the whirly tube, the like that

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Speaker 3: plastic tube that you can make sounds into and you

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Speaker 3: like snap the ribs in and pull them out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, though I guess there's probably that probably produces it

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Speaker 2: sound in part by air as well. I haven't messed

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Speaker 2: around with one of those in a bit, but maybe

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Speaker 2: akin to that, if we're sort of tragulating things like

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Speaker 2: a little bit of washboard, a little bit of that toy,

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Speaker 2: maybe something else thrown in there as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So I actually got curious about the mechanics of

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Speaker 3: how the timble makes the sound because I couldn't based

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Speaker 3: on what I was reading, I couldn't quite picture it.

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Speaker 3: And I finally found a source that got into the

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Speaker 3: details here. So this was in a press release tied

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Speaker 3: to a twenty thirteen acoustics conference presentation by a team

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Speaker 3: from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island,

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Speaker 3: and the press release was published by the Acoustical Society

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Speaker 3: of America. Apparently, these Naval researchers were interested in studying

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Speaker 3: cicadas because cicadas are able to generate an extremely loud

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Speaker 3: sound with a very small body using relatively little energy,

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Speaker 3: and they thought this type of technology could be useful

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00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:36,399
Speaker 3: for underwater communications, rescue operations, beacons, ship to ship communication,

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Speaker 3: remote sensing, that kind of thing. The article quotes a

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Speaker 3: researcher named Dirk Hughes who was part of this team

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Speaker 3: at the NUWC, and also summarizes their conference presentation by saying, quote,

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Speaker 3: the explanation in brief is that a buckling rib is

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Speaker 3: arrested in its rapid motion by impact with the part

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Speaker 3: of the cicada's anatomy called a timble, which functions somewhat

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Speaker 3: as a gong being hit by a hammer. It is

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Speaker 3: set into vibration at nearly a single frequency, and the

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Speaker 3: vibration rapidly dies out. Hughes tries to make the analogy

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Speaker 3: to human bodies and says, I don't know if this

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Speaker 3: really works all that well, but he's trying. Okay, So

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Speaker 3: Hughes says, you should imagine like using muscles inside your

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Speaker 3: chest to pull your ribs in until they buckle inward,

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Speaker 3: collapsing into your body, and then you relax the muscles

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Speaker 3: and release the ribs and they snap back into place

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Speaker 3: and they hit this gong's timble. So the collapsing and

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Speaker 3: snapping back process makes this clicking sound with the timble.

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Speaker 3: And then if you do this like three hundred or

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Speaker 3: four hundred times a second, you have the kind of

428
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 3: buzz or whirr the cicadas do. And then you can

429
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:56,639
Speaker 3: change it to alter frequency and rhythm patterns and so forth.

430
00:24:57,320 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 2: It's slightly horrifying, but I think I do get what

431
00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:03,040
Speaker 2: he's going for here. That does make more sense.

432
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 3: So I was reading more about the function of cicada

433
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 3: sounds in a book called Courtship and Mate Finding an

434
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,639
Speaker 3: Insects A Comparative Approach by Raymond J. C. Cannon, And

435
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 3: according to canon, adult male cicadas emit sounds for a

436
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 3: variety of different reasons. There are very importantly mate attraction calls.

437
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 3: These are produced by males to attract females across a

438
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:29,440
Speaker 3: long distance and help males and females find each other. Apparently,

439
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 3: the females respond by also making a sound, not with timbles,

440
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 3: but in some cases by snapping their wings together, and

441
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 3: this sound in turn attracts the males. There are courtship songs.

442
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 3: These are somewhat different, and they occur once a male

443
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 3: and female have found each other. It sort of further

444
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 3: cements a mating relationship. It's the wooing song. If the

445
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,399
Speaker 3: female likes what she hears, the cicadas will mate. There

446
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:59,359
Speaker 3: are also interestingly congregational songs. These occur when cicadas gather

447
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 3: in large groups, and maybe we can talk more about

448
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 3: the function of these later. But then there are also

449
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:09,600
Speaker 3: disturbance sounds. These happen if a cicada is caught or

450
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 3: feels threatened, it'll make a distress sound. Now, the timbles

451
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 3: are very common, but Canon also mentions some cicadas have

452
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:21,160
Speaker 3: a different system. Canon writes quote, some cicadas communicate using

453
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 3: a different type of sound production called crepitation. Sound pulses

454
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:28,639
Speaker 3: in these species are produced by slapping the wings together

455
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:32,480
Speaker 3: over the body or slapping the wings against the body surface.

456
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:37,679
Speaker 3: Thus there are both crepitating and timbling cicada species. But

457
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 3: as I said, a very important function of the sounds

458
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:45,439
Speaker 3: produced by the cicada is for mating. And mating of course,

459
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 3: kicks off the life cycle of the cicada. Which is

460
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:52,200
Speaker 3: a fascinating subject in itself that I guess we will

461
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 3: need to get into, but maybe in the context of

462
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 3: talking about the difference between annual and periodical cicadas.

463
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 2: That's right now. As we get into this, I want

464
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 2: to turn. I want to point out that one of

465
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 2: my sources here is a book by one of our

466
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 2: past guests, Gene Kritsky. We chatted with him a while

467
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 2: bag this was years ago about his excellent book The

468
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 2: Tears of ray Bee Keeping in Ancient Egypt. He's an

469
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 2: excellent authority on that topic, but he has also authored

470
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 2: numerous books about the cicada, and you even see him

471
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:26,720
Speaker 2: popping up in the media to chat about them. A

472
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago, on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight program,

473
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 2: they had a supercut of people on TV like slamming cicadas,

474
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 2: like talking smack about cicadas, and there was actually a

475
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 2: clip of Gene in there saying that they stink. Yeah,

476
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 2: it's it's funny. It's worth looking up. It's it's a

477
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 2: very funny segment. But of course, knowing who Gene Kritsky is,

478
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,639
Speaker 2: knowing that like few people are going to be as

479
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 2: big a fan of cicadas as this guy that kind

480
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:59,639
Speaker 2: of made it even funnier, you know. But anyway, so

481
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 2: I'm gona refer to to Kritsky a fair bit. But

482
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 2: one thing I want to stress beforehand, this is also

483
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 2: citing his work, We need to stress that cicadas are

484
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 2: not locusts, despite the fact that they were commonly called

485
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 2: locus for a very long time, and this mistake continues

486
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:19,679
Speaker 2: to linger in the popular mindset and even in the

487
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 2: media to a certain extent, not in terms of like

488
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 2: the actual calling them locus, but also but thinking about

489
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 2: them in terms of locusts.

490
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 3: M yeah, so like, oh, when the when the brood

491
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 3: of cicadas emerged, they're they're like locusts, a plague of

492
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 3: locusts descending upon the land right now.

493
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 2: Not to say the cicadas cannot be destructive to a

494
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 2: certain degree. I mean, they can litter their bodies everywhere,

495
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 2: and and animals will be hard pressed to keep up

496
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 2: with eating them all. So that can kind of make

497
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 2: a mess.

498
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 3: And then the reasons we can talk about they can

499
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 3: damage some plants.

500
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 2: That's true. That's the other big thing is that via

501
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 2: the way and the place that they lay their eggs,

502
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 2: there can be some plant damage, but these not like

503
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 2: the locusts that you think of in terms of like

504
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 2: big biblical plagues of locus descending on crops. However, the

505
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 2: thing is, as Kritsky points out, Europeans in the Americas

506
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 2: called them flies. In the seventeenth century, they called cicadas flies,

507
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 2: and then they called them locus during the eighteenth century,

508
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 2: again despite the fact that they certainly are not locus.

509
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 2: Locus are grasshoppers, so they're in a different order altogether.

510
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:34,239
Speaker 2: That's orthoptera locus. As with accounts of biblical plagues, you know,

511
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 2: we're talking about creatures that feast on leafy matter and

512
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 2: thus crops. Cicadas consume plant sap. Most of that plant

513
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:44,840
Speaker 2: sap consumption is taking place underground, as we'll be discussing,

514
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 2: and there was also there are also these long standing

515
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 2: superstitions that cicadas caused illness, which on one hand you

516
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 2: could probably connect to European biblical ideas about plagues of

517
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 2: locusts and so far forth. But native peoples of America

518
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 2: is apparently all so believed in this to some extent

519
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:05,000
Speaker 2: as well. We may come back to this later on.

520
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 2: At present, i'm not sure how much of this, you know,

521
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 2: you're just getting into the idea that, especially in North

522
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 2: America with periodical cicadas, there may be just some sort

523
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 2: of idea of potential portents in the way things seem

524
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 2: to work out in the natural world, like something that

525
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 2: is occurring, you know, ever so many years. Well, you

526
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 2: can imagine how one might take special notice of that,

527
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,480
Speaker 2: and maybe that does end up matching up in a

528
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 2: non meaningful way with events that have occurred in a

529
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 2: given people or in a given region environmentally. He also

530
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 2: points out that there was also an early colonial Early

531
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 2: American tradition in which you could predict wars or peace

532
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 2: based on whether you could see a W or a

533
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 2: P spelled out on the wings of the cicada, and

534
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,920
Speaker 2: Risky points out that their wing veins only ever make

535
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 2: a W. They can't really make a pee unless you again,

536
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 2: unless you really really want to see a pe there,

537
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 2: I guess, and that in general it was a safe

538
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 2: prophetic bat during this time period to see the W

539
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 2: as opposed to the P. Getting back though, to the

540
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 2: cicada itself, let's start with the basics of the life cycle.

541
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 2: Any sort of cicada you're looking at has three stages

542
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 2: egg nymph and an adult an adult female lays an egg,

543
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 2: as we teased out earlier, in plant tissue, usually woody

544
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 2: plant tissue. This is going to be essentially injected via

545
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 2: its ovipositor.

546
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 3: We should stop for a second and dwell on the

547
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 3: organ that the female uses to lay these eggs. So

548
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 3: it is a fairly remarkable mechanism. As you said, Rob,

549
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 3: it's this external appendage called an ovipositor, and this ovipositor

550
00:31:56,160 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 3: organ is essentially a knife that lays eggs. It's like

551
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 3: a hollow, sharp, rigid spike knife thing. It contains a

552
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 3: significant amount of metal in the tissues, metal content. And

553
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 3: using this metal studded ovipositor, the female cicada slices and

554
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 3: gouges these deep slits into the wood of a tree,

555
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 3: usually a softer part of the tree, like a new

556
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 3: branch with the green wood, and then cuts these gouges

557
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 3: in there and lays clutches of eggs inside the slits.

558
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 2: That's right, and this is why you know technically they

559
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 2: the cicadas can damage plants and so forth, So this

560
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 2: is how the eggs are laid. The eggs then of

561
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 2: course end up hatching, and this will take a matter

562
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 2: of weeks, and what emerges is a wingless nymph which

563
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 2: burrows down into the ground to suck the juices from

564
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 2: the roots of perennial plants. So they're little subterranean plant vampires.

565
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 2: And while they feed, they grow and they mold and

566
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 2: eventually more on this. In a second, they emerge from

567
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 2: the ground and undergo one last molt into wing it

568
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 2: adult form. This will be their final form, and they

569
00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 2: use it to complete their life cycle in just a

570
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 2: few weeks or less of mating and egg laying.

571
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 3: Now there are a lot of interesting scientific questions about

572
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 3: what happens while the cicadas are in their their various

573
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 3: nymph forms. The different periods between the moltings are referred

574
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 3: to as in stars, the different nymph in stars. Underground,

575
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 3: they're doing something down there. They're feeding on the plant roots.

576
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 3: They're sucking xylum up from the plant roots with their

577
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 3: little rostrums. They're you know, sucking beaks, and they're growing.

578
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of there are a lot of

579
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 3: scientific questions remaining about that part of the cicada's life

580
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 3: cycle because it's not that easy to study.

581
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, because when they're out and about in their full

582
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 2: adult adult forms. You are at great pains to ignore them,

583
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 2: like good luck. Just eventually you just kind of get

584
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:01,400
Speaker 2: used to it, I guess, but you cannot deny that

585
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 2: they are there. But when they're underground, it's kind of

586
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 2: out of side, out of mind. You may turn one

587
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 2: up on digging in the yard, I've done that before,

588
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 2: but otherwise we simply live in different worlds. They live below,

589
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:16,879
Speaker 2: we live above. They're quietly drinking that plant sap and

590
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 2: only ever having to contend with various subterranean threats such

591
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 2: as I've read in ants in some cases can go

592
00:34:24,680 --> 00:34:29,640
Speaker 2: after them, moles may go after them, some other subterranean

593
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 2: insectivore or surface world diggers. I've also read, you know

594
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 2: certainly about bears or humans digging them up for food.

595
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 2: More on that last point later on, But yeah, for

596
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 2: the most part, they're down there that they're undergoing additional

597
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 2: moltings as they grow older. They're also going to go

598
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:50,439
Speaker 2: deeper and find different roots to feed upon. But how

599
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:53,280
Speaker 2: long do they stay underground and when do they emerge?

600
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 2: This is where we see the primary difference between the

601
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:02,279
Speaker 2: very species of annual cicadas and periodical so annual. Cicadas

602
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 2: can be found around the world. As the name suggests,

603
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,200
Speaker 2: they emerge every year. Now, this doesn't mean they only

604
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:11,560
Speaker 2: spend a year underground. They have Typically this is going

605
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 2: to vary from species species, but we're talking about two

606
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 2: to five years underground. But the short duration and the

607
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 2: timing of their nymph stages just means that every year

608
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,520
Speaker 2: there's going to be an emergence. Think of it like this.

609
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:26,919
Speaker 2: There are a number of different production companies out there

610
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 2: making superhero movies, and they might not all put out

611
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 2: a superhero movie every year, but enough of them or

612
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 2: in some state of production that it's a pretty safe

613
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 2: guess that at least one superhero movie is going to

614
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:42,800
Speaker 2: come out every year, And if your life cycle depends

615
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,319
Speaker 2: on that, then then you're in luck. By the way,

616
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,239
Speaker 2: by some estimates and criteria, the last year we had

617
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 2: seemingly zero superhero films was nineteen sixty five.

618
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 3: That's funny.

619
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to go too deep on that.

620
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 2: I went slightly deep trying to figure this out, but

621
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 2: a similar case could probably be made for Dracula movies.

622
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 2: I could not give it get an exact year on this,

623
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:09,280
Speaker 2: but I think the last year without a Dracula movie

624
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,280
Speaker 2: was probably in the nineteen fifties of the nineteen sixties.

625
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,919
Speaker 2: Periodical cicadas, however, these might be more comparable to adaptations

626
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 2: of the novel Dune, which occur only every sixteen to

627
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:25,399
Speaker 2: twenty one years, so nineteen eighty four, twenty twenty twenty one,

628
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:28,320
Speaker 2: with nothing in between. As long as you're not counting

629
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 2: sequels or part twos and so forth, if you depend

630
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 2: on seeing a new adaptation of the novel Dune by

631
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 2: Frank Herbert every year, you are going to starve to death. Okay. So,

632
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:47,040
Speaker 2: periodical cicadas are native to the eastern and midwestern United States,

633
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 2: and they're famous for these lengthy subterranean nymph stages punctuated

634
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 2: by the synchronous emergence. So three species emerge every seventeen years,

635
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 2: and four species emerge every thirteen years. It makes them

636
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 2: one of the longest living known insects, though I believe

637
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:08,800
Speaker 2: termite queens still top the list. It's something like fifty

638
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 2: years or even up to a century of life I

639
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 2: believe has also been suggested for turmite queens.

640
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 3: But even if they're not the longest living individual insects

641
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 3: like that, period of development is crazy to think about.

642
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:26,239
Speaker 3: So they in the case of seventeen years cicadas, the

643
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 3: hatchling falls from its egg, it goes underground, and then

644
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:33,719
Speaker 3: it takes seventeen years before it comes up out of

645
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 3: the ground as an adult and adult again ready to mate.

646
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 2: Exactly Now. I've read as well that that scientists something

647
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 2: of scientistsically think that by like eight years in they're

648
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 2: essentially ready to come up again. But they don't, and

649
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 2: we'll get into the whys of this, and a bit

650
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 2: like they still remain in this nimph stage, more or

651
00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 2: less safely underground until the time of emergence has arrived.

652
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's still amazing spending over a decade underground

653
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,799
Speaker 2: in this nymph stage before emerging right at the very

654
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 2: end to just live out the last few weeks of

655
00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 2: your life as this flying, breeding, noise making adult after

656
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,319
Speaker 2: really a stealth existence as far as surface world life

657
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 2: is concerned, for just so terribly long as you've no

658
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,280
Speaker 2: doubt heard on the news and perhaps witnessed in person.

659
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty four is one of those rare years where

660
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 2: a seventeen year brood and a thirteen year brood sync

661
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:33,760
Speaker 2: up with brood thirteen and brood nineteen emerging and expected

662
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:36,600
Speaker 2: to number in the trillions. The brood system can be

663
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 2: a bit complex, but in there are multiple broods and

664
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 2: they're spread across different regions. Pretty much every year, periodical

665
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 2: cicadas are emerging somewhere. Sometimes they emerge later early, but

666
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 2: the count works for the most part. And we'll get

667
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 2: into even more about what this means here in a bit.

668
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 3: Right, So, even in the case of the long dormant

669
00:38:55,320 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 3: periodical cicadas, there are often still some emerging somewhere, but

670
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 3: they might not be emerging in your region in any

671
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 3: given year, right.

672
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 2: Right, So for this long period of time they're down there,

673
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 2: they're drinking the asylum. The nymphs dig deeper as they age,

674
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 2: they feed on larger roots. But this is key. They

675
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:18,160
Speaker 2: always feed very slowly. Their metabolic rate is very slow

676
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 2: during the nymph stage, almost like they're in a state

677
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:23,879
Speaker 2: of suspended animation, you know, and so their thirst does

678
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 2: not overpower healthy trees. But again, you can't help but

679
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:30,879
Speaker 2: come back to this thirteen to seventeen year that it's

680
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 2: crazy to put this in human years, Joe. I don't

681
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 2: know if you saw this, but there was a Saturday

682
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:37,759
Speaker 2: Night Live skit that did a fun send up of

683
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,439
Speaker 2: this recently, where you had a pair of actors each

684
00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 2: playing a cicada from each of the two major periodical

685
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:49,399
Speaker 2: broods that are emerging. And so they're sitting there at

686
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,360
Speaker 2: the news desk in their cicada costumes, one with the

687
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven necklace around its neck and the

688
00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:57,439
Speaker 2: other one with the twenty eleven necklace around their neck,

689
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 2: and they're, you know, they're very excited to get out

690
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 2: there and mate and to fly into people's faces and shirts.

691
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 2: But they're also like making pop culture references to twenty

692
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 2: eleven in two thousand and seven, which I thought was

693
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:14,959
Speaker 2: very funny and kind of like drives home the time

694
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 2: periods we're talking about.

695
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 3: Here, seems like such an innocent time, all.

696
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 2: Right, So we can sit around and wonder at this

697
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:38,520
Speaker 2: you all day and just talk about how amazing it

698
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 2: is that they're so long lived and there's been so

699
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 2: much of it in this Nymph phase. But you know,

700
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,799
Speaker 2: you come back to the basic question, why is this

701
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 2: the case? Why live underground in nymph stage for so

702
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 2: long and then remain in nymph stage past that eight

703
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 2: year mark when maturity has apparently already been reached, you know,

704
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 2: to go back to our hyper sleep sci fi analogy,

705
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 2: it's kind of like they haven't reached their destination yet.

706
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 2: You don't want to wake up halfway on the trip

707
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 2: to the planet that you're headed to in your spaceship,

708
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:13,839
Speaker 2: and that would seem to be part of it. Though

709
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 2: it also raises additional questions like why have these cicada

710
00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:20,359
Speaker 2: species evolved to take such long nymph stages of more

711
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 2: than a decade? Like why are they why did they

712
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 2: set their why are their sites set so far out?

713
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating question, and also the why, but

714
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,880
Speaker 3: the how how do they manage that sort of timing?

715
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 3: How do they count the years?

716
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't have iPhones down there with the alarm

717
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 2: clocks on them, and even if they did, even if

718
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:41,839
Speaker 2: they put them in a battery mode, they wouldn't last

719
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 2: that long. According to Kritsky, the how involved here of

720
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 2: how they do it this in and of itself remains

721
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 2: somewhat of a mystery, but one theory is that as

722
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 2: they feed on the tree step, as they feed on

723
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 2: the xylum, that they're kind of hacked into the information

724
00:41:57,280 --> 00:42:00,080
Speaker 2: of the tree as well, like the fluid information, the

725
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 2: fluid flow of the tree, and that they somehow track

726
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:05,839
Speaker 2: and remember fluid flow in such a way as to

727
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 2: time themselves.

728
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 3: Yeah. So like the nutrition they get from the tree

729
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 3: varies seasonally, and with that mechanism, they can track the

730
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:15,799
Speaker 3: passage of seasons.

731
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is crazy. Like I think it's one of

732
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 2: these things to kind of come back to David Eagleman's

733
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 2: Mister Potato Head explanation of how brains work with sensory input.

734
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 2: You know, it's like, if you have certain sensory input

735
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:32,399
Speaker 2: coming into the brain, it will the brain will make

736
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 2: sense of that and use that information. So if you

737
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 2: could plug the stock market into your brain, like it

738
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 2: would make sense of that data. And so you can

739
00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 2: I feel like you can kind of apply the same

740
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 2: thinking here, Like here's a creature living so long underground,

741
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 2: and to be clear, like not it's not in a

742
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:51,720
Speaker 2: real state of suspended animation here. It's still moving around,

743
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:55,759
Speaker 2: feeding and acting as a as an organism. But one

744
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 2: of the things that it is frequently connected to is

745
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 2: that fluid flow of the host plant, and like that

746
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 2: becomes perhaps kind of a sense in and of itself. Now,

747
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:11,279
Speaker 2: as for why they do this. Most sources agree that

748
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 2: it has to do with disrupting the evolution of synchronous

749
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 2: predators and parasites. So when cicadas emerge, any cicadas emerge

750
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 2: annual or periodical, it is a feast. And this alone

751
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 2: is an anti predator strategy. It is a predator cetacean

752
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 2: so spawn or emerge in such high numbers that predators

753
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 2: can't keep up. They can't possibly eat everyone. Like how

754
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 2: many cicadas can you possibly eat? You know, random dog,

755
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 2: You can eat a dozen ovis, maybe two dozen ovus,

756
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:46,399
Speaker 2: maybe three and get a little sick. But there's way

757
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 2: more of us than that. You cannot possibly eat all

758
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 2: the cicadas, And we're going to keep going around and

759
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 2: doing our business.

760
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 3: If there are sharks in the water, you would rather

761
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:56,399
Speaker 3: be one of a thousand fish than one of ten.

762
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:05,319
Speaker 2: Right, And so it ultimately comes into hitting these long

763
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:09,760
Speaker 2: nipt stages just right, so that you prevent any sort

764
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 2: of to a certain extent, specific parasite predator threats from

765
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 2: evolving to depend on your emergence. So Kritzky writes, quote,

766
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 2: both seventeen and thirteen are prime numbers integers that are

767
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 2: divisible only by one and the number itself. It is

768
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 2: hypothesized that a long prime number life cycle for our

769
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:35,719
Speaker 2: cicadas would make it difficult for predators or parasites to

770
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 2: evolve synchronous life cycles with the cicadas because there are

771
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 2: no intermediate life cycle steps that could easily evolve synchrony

772
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 2: with the cicadas.

773
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 3: So if they were to emerge every year, like some

774
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 3: cicadas do in the same place, local predators could adapt

775
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 3: their life cycle to you know, to sort of like

776
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,439
Speaker 3: save up, save up their appetite for that time when

777
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 3: all the cicadas are hanging around. Maybe they might you know,

778
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 3: they could adapt in a number of different ways, but

779
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:10,520
Speaker 3: maybe they are able to starve themselves for some other

780
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 3: part of the year, knowing that the cicadas will reliably

781
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 3: arrive in May or June at this every year.

782
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 2: Right right, And to be clear, we do have examples

783
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 2: where specifically parasitoid wasps have evolved to be in sync

784
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:29,920
Speaker 2: with annual cicadas, the ones that come out every year. Remember,

785
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 2: parasitoid wasps in general are a great, highly evolved threat

786
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 2: to various insects and arachnids, using these other organisms as

787
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 2: hosts for their young either as you know, something left

788
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 2: in a paralyzed or you know, some half alive state

789
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:52,279
Speaker 2: in some sort of a nest or a burrow to

790
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 2: then consume when they hatch, or in like true Zenamore style,

791
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 2: a warm body or I don't know about warm body,

792
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 2: but a body let's in which to deposit the egg

793
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 2: of your young so that it may hatch within and

794
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 2: then feast inside of the host organism and then emerge.

795
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 2: So this would be a threat worth evolving around and

796
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 2: creating strategies to avoid. But again, not every cicadas has

797
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 2: gone the periodical route. With the annual cicadas, we do

798
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 2: have specific cicada killer or cicada hawk wasps in North America.

799
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 2: With these solitary species, you have a female that captures

800
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:36,919
Speaker 2: adult cicadas, paralyzes them with a sting, and then transports

801
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 2: them back to a burrow, and she'll collect multiple cicadas.

802
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 2: I've read as many as like one hundred cicadas in

803
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 2: this burrow, one for each egg that she lays. And

804
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 2: she knows what the sex will be of each egg,

805
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 2: so she'll she'll have one egg and she'll put that

806
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 2: that it will be a male egg, and she'll put

807
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 2: that on one paralyzed cicada and then there'll be a

808
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:01,320
Speaker 2: female egg and that's that's going to be a bigger organism.

809
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:06,759
Speaker 2: So it needs two to three cicadas to feast upon sick. Yeah, yeah,

810
00:47:07,040 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 2: but again, the cicada hawk wasp praise exclusively on annual cicadas.

811
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 2: These are the dog day cicadas, and they target them

812
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 2: during their regular emergence period. The late summer emergence periodicals

813
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 2: emerge earlier, so like they're just never synced up to

814
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:28,359
Speaker 2: hit them. I have read that if periodicals, if some

815
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:33,240
Speaker 2: periodical individuals are emerging late, they may end up being targeted,

816
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:35,319
Speaker 2: but it's more of an incidental target. Like for the

817
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:39,919
Speaker 2: most part, the periodical cicadas have evolved so that parasitoid

818
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:42,799
Speaker 2: wasps cannot be in sync with them. And this has

819
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 2: to do again with these long nymph stages and prime

820
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:46,879
Speaker 2: numbered emergencies.

821
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 3: Now that's parasitoid wasps. But I've also read that when

822
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 3: the periodical cicadas do emerge, they are a food source

823
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 3: for basically every type of predatory organism out there, Like

824
00:47:58,120 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 3: everything eats them.

825
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, humans eat them too, And like I said, I

826
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 2: think in a later episode, we'll get into some of

827
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 2: the human culinary traditions surrounding the cicada. And in the meantime,

828
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 2: if you have eaten cicadas and or have any like

829
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 2: cultural experience with cicada cuisine right in, we would love

830
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 2: to hear from you.

831
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 3: Well, if this strange prime number staggered periodical emergence has

832
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 3: these benefits in protecting against predator and parasite adaptation, why

833
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 3: don't we see more cicadas doing that? Like, why don't

834
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:33,319
Speaker 3: all of the annual cicadas eventually evolve to be like that?

835
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:35,799
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, Kritsky goes into this a little bit in

836
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:39,320
Speaker 2: this latest book. He points out that we have actually

837
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,399
Speaker 2: discovered a periodical cicada outside of the US that is

838
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 2: on an eight year cycle. This is a species in Fiji.

839
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 2: He points to another cicada species in India that's only

840
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 2: four years. I don't have additional information on these species,

841
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 2: but I guess one would assume that they benefit from

842
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 2: a different parasite prey threat array. And I guess in general,

843
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 2: when we don't see it more, My read on it

844
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,839
Speaker 2: is that, on one hand, obviously an organism has to

845
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 2: have the capability to go through this sort of lengthy

846
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:12,080
Speaker 2: nymph stage to and engage in the prime number of

847
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 2: emergence rates and so forth. And then also I guess

848
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 2: it's key to realize that there is this There does

849
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:21,839
Speaker 2: seem to be this kind of balance between the periodical

850
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:25,160
Speaker 2: and the annuals. So there will be annual cicadas in

851
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:29,440
Speaker 2: areas that have periodical cicadas, And one wonders like, what

852
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 2: would happen to periodical cicadas if the annual cicadas just stopped,

853
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:39,239
Speaker 2: if something, you know, wiped them out. You know, it

854
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:44,719
Speaker 2: would certainly disrupt everything, maybe just cataclysmically for all cicada

855
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 2: dependent organisms, but maybe it would. It would result in shifts,

856
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 2: shifts that they might not be able to keep up

857
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:57,800
Speaker 2: with for existing cicada parasites and predators. But again, the

858
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 2: thing that keep in mind about the cicada is that

859
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 2: it preys exclusively on annual cicadas, so like it has

860
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:12,120
Speaker 2: no plan B outside of cicadas for continuing its life cycle. Now,

861
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 2: Kritzky also gets into the evolution of all of this,

862
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 2: which I thought was interesting. He writes that while cicadas

863
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 2: themselves date back to the time of the dinosaurs, periodical

864
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:28,200
Speaker 2: cicadas again in we're talking about these North American varieties cicadas,

865
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 2: they're more of a recent evolution, he writes, Quote, the

866
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:37,760
Speaker 2: seventeen years Septindecham and neotradecam ancestor diverged about five hundred

867
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 2: thousand years ago from the thirteen year Tridecam species. The

868
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 2: Cassini and Ducula species diverged from their common ancestor about

869
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 2: two point five million years ago, and their respective thirteen

870
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,280
Speaker 2: and seventeen year species separated within the last three hundred

871
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 2: thousand years.

872
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:56,479
Speaker 3: Oh, so that's fairly recent. Yeah.

873
00:50:56,480 --> 00:50:59,719
Speaker 2: He says the current array of North American periodical cicadas

874
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:04,400
Speaker 2: was seemingly influenced by ice age glacial movements, specifically, quote

875
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:07,600
Speaker 2: the formation of glacial refugia caused by the advancing ice

876
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 2: sheets and the subsequent habitat expansion that resulted from glacial retreats.

877
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 3: Ah okay, So as yes, the ice is creeping down

878
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 3: closer to the equator and then retreating up that that

879
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 3: may have had something to do with the emergence of

880
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 3: these these differently these long dormant species. Yeah.

881
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:28,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, just you know, in general, changing and upsetting the

882
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 2: local ecosystem, creating niches and opportunities for changes in the

883
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 2: ways these organisms are operating and leading to speciation. And

884
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:44,000
Speaker 2: so this is out of this we see the emergence

885
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 2: of these these new varieties of cicada that are engaging

886
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:53,240
Speaker 2: in these long periodical emergence life cycles.

887
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 3: Amazing.

888
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well, I think that's where we're gonna

889
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 2: cut it off for today. Joe, thanks again for for

890
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 2: working through the illness, but putting the sick in cicada,

891
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 2: so I think it ultimately works out. Again. We're going

892
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:11,360
Speaker 2: to be back in a couple of weeks with more

893
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 2: on the cicada. We'll get into certainly get into some

894
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,400
Speaker 2: history and myth and folklore, and probably some more just

895
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 2: general science about them as well. And in the meantime,

896
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 2: certainly write in with your experiences and thoughts regarding the cicada,

897
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:30,800
Speaker 2: be the observational, culinary, folkloric, mythological, fictional, and so forth.

898
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:33,880
Speaker 2: As a reminder, Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily

899
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:37,280
Speaker 2: a science podcast, science and culture podcast, with core episodes

900
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:41,360
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901
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 2: a short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We

902
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:46,600
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903
00:52:46,600 --> 00:52:48,800
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.

904
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,680
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

905
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

906
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

907
00:52:57,080 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

908
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your

909
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:11,240
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910
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,239
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911
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