17-year Cicada

[ThaSaltCracka]

to be honest, OP find a way to "enjoy" something that happens once every 17 years. Thats pretty neat actually.

[tuq]

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to be honest, OP find a way to "enjoy" something that happens once every 17 years. Thats pretty neat actually.

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Yeah. 80% of the guys on this board don't even get laid that often. Don't take it for granted.

[waarior]

In certain areas they can be really loud.

At my house a few years back, in a suburb of DC with many mature trees around, it was at times difficult to have an outside conversation (especially near dusk). Other areas a few miles away it was barely noticeable.


The segment on cicadas on Planet Earth talks about how nearly every creature feasts when the cicadas come out. Reminded of my dog during the outbreak.

My dog loved them. Anytime he was let outside he would gorge himself, throwup and then continue eating. Couldn't stop it. My dog is a relatively picky eater too. It was like he knew these were special treats courtesy of nature. And he was going to try to eat as many as possible.

A really cool spectacle of nature. Just try to enjoy it because even though it can be a nuisance it will be over before you know it.

[TimTimSalabim]

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The cicadas' survival strategy is simply to overwhelm predators by their sheer numbers, ensuring the survival of most of the individuals and thus of the species. It has been hypothesized that the emergence period of large prime numbers (13 and 17 years) is also a predatory avoidance strategy adopted to eliminate the possibility of potential predators receiving periodic population boosts by synchronizing their own generations to divisors of the cicada emergence period.

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People can speculate on the validity of this theorized correspondence between prime number year emergences and darwin natural selection of species, evolution, etc., and it may never be exactly proven, so to speak, but it is interesting that nature can develop such 'predator avoidance strategies'.

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Those craft cicadas apparently forgot that every prime number can be divided by 1.

[MicroBob]

I'm uncertain of the relationship of the cicadas and my teacher's subsequent mishap.
I was just reminded of it when I was thinking about him and that class.

I will ask some former classmates of mine if they think the cicadas were the cause.
But I don't think so. He was just in that long line of high-school teachers who had some sexual shame and the others didn't have any leanings towards cicadas.

Band teacher stopped showing up to work one day and never returned. A few days later in the police-report in the paper it was discovered he was caught in his car in a K-Mart parking-lot yanking it.

Math teacher and chess-coach did some time in prison (and may still be there) getting caught in a park with a couple 14-year-old girls.

My teachers were real winners.

[TxRedMan]

Not only are they loud, but they also seem to get pissed off. In Texas they show up a lot, and sometimes I have to stomp one out who's humming his annoying tune somewhere within earshot, and they're not easy to kill, i.e., they fly, are sort of tough...but it's funny as hell, when you're whacking one or whatever they seem to get pissed off and increase their tone and volume.

Funny little buggers.

[danvh]

As another DC person who went through these a few years ago (and 17 years before that), I can say its not a big deal. If you are near a ton of trees they are loud as hell and annoying. Otherwise they are just a slight irritation.

But like others said they bring on amusement for dogs as well as hilarity when they land of girls. Its pretty much 50/50

[Lonhro]

Am I the only one here who finds it amazing that these things practically "disappear" for 17 years, but their re-emergence is pre-programmed? I find this fascinating. Like, WTF

[g-bebe]

I ran across these three summers ago when my family and I did a baseball trip down to Chicago and Milwaukee. Drove by some trees near a Chili's and the sound was just insane. It's not like they were locusts and flying around or anything, but they were loud.

[Homer]

Curious if anyone has a link to a list of years in which these have appeared (by region). I seem to recall seeing them when I was 7 or 8 and want to see how good my memory is.

Edit -- Found a link for PA. They did indeed appear when I was 8. (http://www.ento.psu.edu/extension/fa...cal_cicada.htm if anyone else from PA is interested, still can't find one for the whole country).