IIRRC, the diplomats were not complaining about noises. They suspected inaudible sonic attacks. You know when cicadas and crickets annoy you. The diplomats and other American travelers did not know the source of their weird headaches. Plus the reasoning explains the headaches only during the cicada season. That's why they included crickets.
And that's what makes Cuban reasoning funny.
More detailed Cuban dissimilation at Breitbart. The more detailed they get, the funnier they get.
I've read several pages online about cicadas, they all say the same things, but alas, after all that I'm still not an expert. I have one unanswered question. Their cycle is 13 or 17 years and the bugs emerge all at once. Fine. That's 17 years for each round of bugs. But do those places get rounds every year? Are all cicadas in the same round, or are the groups staged, each with their 17 year cycle? None of the pages I've read state outright that a location gets cicadas every year, and they're all 17 years old when they emerge each year. I heard these bugs in Japan. They are impressively loud. And I believe that I heard them each year. Can't at least one of the pages say that?
Let's keep looking.
Some cicadas emerge every year.
Of all places, Slate has the answer. Thank you Slate.
Then why does it feel like I hear about them all the damn time?
Because you do. Different broods are staggered over time and scattered across the United States. That means that while a particular brood may only emerge in the upper East Coast once every 17 (or 13) years, a brood is almost certainly emerging somewhere during most of those off years. Most likely, you’re hearing about different broods every year.We cicada expert types call the cicada rounds "broods." So we say "brood" to prove that we're expert.
So if a brood emerges somewhere every year, then what’s so special about this year?
An excellent question. This year we are seeing the emergence of Brood V, which has been sleeping since 1999. Brood V happens to be spread out across many populous areas of the United States, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Long Island, New York. (Due to an especially cool spring, we expect to see them around May 23.) But honestly, it’s a medium-size brood. Much of the to-do is just media hype.Screaming Cicada, Cuban sonic weapon.
Well, I can tell you, as a boy these bugs sure were fun. The bugs hide from you as you approach them, but they're not very good at it. They shift to the opposite side of the branch as squirrels do so you can't see them. But when your brother is there then they cannot hide completely from both of you, and it's a lame attempt at hiding. And they're clumsy. They fall in water and become helpless. Everything around becomes predator and picks them off and they get eaten in vast numbers until all predators are stuffed with them and can't eat any more cicadas, and still there are millions of cicadas screaming in the trees.
Often we'd find their molted exoskeletons and mistake those for their adult form. We thought their adult form died and shriveled up inside there and just disappeared leaving a material ghost. And we did find a lot of dried dead adult forms. The guy in the video is brave for holding a screaming bug. That would have been to much back then at that age. I never held a live screaming bug.
American in Cuba during cicada season.
8 comments:
cicadas, something that I've never encountered.
"I don't like the country, the crickets make me nervous."
--The Marlon Brando character in On The Waterfront
I hear they use the same thing to torture prisoners.
Allen, You need to be in a warmer climate. They were sometimes deafening on hot summer eves in KC.
Nothing pleasant about them.
It never got above freezing today. Ain't going any farther south. Went into the woods this morning, and cut wood. Don't need to listen to anything but the chainsaw.
They were sometimes deafening on hot summer eves in KC.
Amen to that. Before I read ND's comment I was about to comment that I thought there was something wrong with the electrical power lines outside the apartment the first time I heard a cicada sounding off during the summer we spent in Overland Park, Kansas City (the year the movie Apollo 13 came out--looks it up--1995!
Although I was familiar with the sound cicadas in MI made, nothing prepared me for that noise. It was intense and ongoing, alarming enough to make me go out on the deck to see if something needed to be reported.
According to the Cicadas of MI site, there are ten species here. The exoskeletons I've seen have been an inch to an inch and a half long
To spend multiple years underground as a juvenile followed by a 2-6 week adult life above ground, with most of that time spent making loud noise sounds like something close to hell to me.
The U of M site avoids brood talk, going with "denser aggregations" while speculating on the possibility of 3000 different species, focusing on Developmental Synchronization, sorting them into Periodical and Annual cicadas, and declaring those in the Periodical Category to belong to the genus Magicicada. Which changed before my eyes into Magicada before the buzzer went off.
What is a periodical cicada?
Cicadas are flying, plant-sucking insects of the Order Hemiptera; their closest relatives are leafhoppers, treehoppers, and fulgoroids. Adult cicadas tend to be large (most are 25-50mm), with prominent wide-set eyes, short antennae, and clear wings held roof-like over the abdomen. Cicadas are probably best known for their conspicuous acoustic signals or "songs", which the males make using special structures called tymbals, found on the abdomen. There may be as many as 3000 different cicada species worldwide.
All but a few cicada species have multiple-year life cycles, most commonly 2-8 years. In most cicada species, adults can be found every year because the population is not developmentally synchronized; these are often called "annual" cicada species. In contrast, populations of the periodical cicada species are synchronized, so that almost all of them mature into adults in the same year. The fact that periodical cicadas remain locked together in time is made even more amazing by their extremely long life-cycles of 13 or 17 years.
Periodical cicadas are found in eastern North America and belong to the genus Magicicada. There are seven species -- four with 13-year life cycles (including one new species described in 2000), and three with 17-year cycles. The three 17-year species are generally northern in distribution, while the 13-year species are generally southern and midwestern. Magicicada are so well-synchronized developmentally that they are nearly absent as adults in the 12 or 16 years between emergences. When they do emerge after their long juvenile periods, they do so in huge numbers, forming much denser aggregations than those usually achieved by cicadas. Many people know periodical cicadas by the name "17-year locusts" or "13-year locusts", but they are not true locusts, which are a type of grasshopper.
All of which allows me not to die dumb about the 17 year thing which I hadn't figured out up to this point either.
Post a Comment