They're coming!!!!

[S-Des]

I was talking to Kiten, who's coming up next weekend. I asked if they had the cicadas down there, and was surprised when she indicated she had no idea what I was talking about. I was amused to inform her that we have this giant insect that comes out of the ground by the billions once every 17 years...and it's coming this week. If you've never heard of them, here's the info. It's possibly the strangest reproduction cycle in the entire animal (insect) kingdom.

The northern Illinois brood, which will emerge in late May 2007, has a reputation for the largest emergence of cicadas known anywhere. This is due to the size of the emergence and the research and subsequent reporting over the years by entomologists Monte Lloyd and Henry Dybas at the Field Museum in Chicago. During the 1956 emergence, they counted an average of 311 nymphal emergence holes per square yard of ground in a forested floodplain near Chicago. This translates to 1½ million cicadas per acre. In upland sites, they recorded 27 emergence holes per square yard, translating to about 133,000 per acre. This number is more typical of emergence numbers but is still a tremendous number of insects. For comparison, a city block contains about 3½ acres. When the cicadas start dying and dropping from the trees later in the spring, there are large numbers on the ground, and the odor from their rotting bodies is noticeable. In 1990, there were reports from people in Chicago having to use snow shovels to clear their sidewalks of the dead cicadas.

Cicadas are sometimes mistakenly called locusts. In actuality, they are not at all related to locusts, which are a kind of grasshopper. The male cicadas “sing” during the day to attract females.

Their "singing" is basically non-stop noise. They're harmless, but make virtually everything outside a nightmare. The last big migration was when I was 7. I still remember the trees being completely covered and not being able to take a step in the backyard without a loud "squish". Welcome to Illinois, Kiten.

http://www.extension.uiuc.edu/photolib/lib17/inset/dogday_cicada_seen_head_on.jpg

 

[kiten69]

not being able to take a step in the backyard without a loud "squish". Welcome to Illinois, Kiten.

*GAGS* If we have to walk around outside you are so carrying me!!!

 

[rgraham666]

An elegant survival strategy, isn't it?

By emerging in large numbers on a prime number year they overload the predator population. It greatly lowers the chances of a predator evolving that specifically hunts 17 year cicadas.

There's a bamboo in South East Asia that blooms only once a century. When it does, the pollen can be up to a foot thick on the ground.

Nature is very cool.

 

[S-Des]

An elegant survival strategy, isn't it?

By emerging in large numbers on a prime number year they overload the predator population. It greatly lowers the chances of a predator evolving that specifically hunts 17 year cicadas.

There's a bamboo in South East Asia that blooms only once a century. When it does, the pollen can be up to a foot thick on the ground.

Nature is very cool.

I was just speculating with Rachlou about why they exist the way they do. I hadn't thought about the mass migration being a way of protecting themselves from predators. They live off the tree sap while between migrations. I wonder if it does something positive for the trees or another part of the underground ecology. I'll be interested to watch my daughter's reaction. I thought they were cool as hell (except when I wanted to climb a tree).

 

[rgraham666]

I was just speculating with Rachlou about why they exist the way they do. I hadn't thought about the mass migration being a way of protecting themselves from predators. They live off the tree sap while between migrations. I wonder if it does something positive for the trees or another part of the underground ecology. I'll be interested to watch my daughter's reaction. I thought they were cool as hell (except when I wanted to climb a tree).

I don't believe we have 17 year cicadas here in Toronto. But we do have cicadas. They start singing around late July, at night. The song is rather pretty. I'm glad it's just one or two and not several million though.

I just googled a good article on periodical cicadas.

 

[R. Richard]

I was talking to Kiten, who's coming up next weekend. I asked if they had the cicadas down there, and was surprised when she indicated she had no idea what I was talking about. I was amused to inform her that we have this giant insect that comes out of the ground by the billions once every 17 years...and it's coming this week. If you've never heard of them, here's the info. It's possibly the strangest reproduction cycle in the entire animal (insect) kingdom.

It grows a metre long and lives in your foot

Savelugu, Ghana - The little girl screams in pain and convulsively reaches for the hand inflicting the torture - the hand slowly drawing a thin, white worm from her blistered foot.

"Stop it! Do stop it!" she begs as a woman holds her.

Finally, the worm is out, and the veranda full of other infected kids explodes in claps and shouts of congratulation.

It took six weeks to draw that worm out. Another is about to emerge from her other foot.

A 20-year fight to eradicate guinea worm disease, or dracunculiasis, is in the last, and most difficult stages. It could be the first parasitic disease eradicated, and only the second disease to be eradicated in the world, since smallpox in 1979. But Ghana provides a glimpse of the serious obstacles that stand in the way of guinea worm being vanquished.

Enormous strides have been made since former US President Jimmy Carter dedicated himself to the cause and rallied others - including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Unicef, the UN World Health Organisation and the Japanese government - after seeing a worm emerging from a woman's breast in Ghana's remote north in 1988.

Carter estimated it would be eradicated in 10 years. Now, at age 82, he hopes it will happen in his lifetime.

In 1989, the disease afflicted a reported 3,5 million people in 23 countries in Africa and Asia. In 2005, only 10 674 cases were reported in nine countries - all in Africa.

The last cases always are the most difficult phase of eradication. That is in part because, at a point when so much effort and money already has been extended, monitoring has to be stepped up to ensure no cases have been missed. It is also near the end when donors' attention tends to shift to new crises.

In Ghana, reported guinea worm cases dropped from 180 000 in 1989 to about 4 000 in 1994. But in January, there were 1 001 new cases, almost double the number a year ago.

"Ghana has been our worst disappointment," Carter said in a visit to this country last month.

Ninety percent of Ghana's remaining cases are within 160km of Savelugu, a semiarid Sahelian stretch of dusty farm plots and scrubland prone to drought, where guinea worms breed in manmade dams. About 25 000 people live in the region.

Aid workers built the dams in low-lying flat areas to catch rainwater because wells were so difficult to drill through Savelugu's rockbed. But in the dry season, the dams become breeding reservoirs for guinea worm.

Guinea worm eggs lodge in a microscopic water flea, which people swallow with untreated water. The eggs lodge in abdominal tissue where they hatch and mate. A year later, the worm starts emerging, most often through legs and feet and measuring a meter and more, in a revolting and painful process that can stop people from working for three months.

To relieve the fiery pain, a victim puts the foot in water, and the worm emerges and breeds. Just one worm can discharge a million eggs. So hundreds of people using a dam can practice safe water use and one 3-year-old child can ruin the communal effort.

Guinea worm does not kill its victims but debilitates them, at huge cost to communities that already are among the poorest of the poor. Infected farmers cannot farm, infected children cannot walk to school. Few studies have been done on the economic losses, but the Carter Centre says that in one year rice farmers in northeast Nigeria lost $20-million because of guinea worm.

The eradication campaign involves no treatment or vaccine. Instead, health authorities call for distributing water filters, using a mild pesticide to kill the flea carrier in water holes, and counselling villagers to drink only safe water and stay out of the water supply if they're infected.

Carter has said Ghana is putting too little emphasis on these simple steps, and instead focusing on providing expensive water systems to villages.

Dr. Kofi Issah, government director of health services for the Savelugu district, said guinea worm competes for attention with a host of other diseases, including killers. But he said guinea worm deserved attention because "it has to do with a fundamental right to clean water."

Jim Niquette, the Carter Centre's Ghana representative, is confident the disease can be eliminated in four to seven years.

Obstacles, though, include water sources that villagers hide from officials and superstitious beliefs that the worms should not be fought because they are punishment meted out by the gods or witches, said Joe Bariki-Laar, the regional coordinator for Ghana Health Services.

Three of Savelugu's four dams had dried up by March, and volunteers were recruited to police the use of water at the remaining dam, a shrunken pond where girls and goats, donkeys and boys, women and cattle come kilometres for water. Mauve water lilies struggle to survive in one corner.

Infected people are told not to enter the water. Guards try to keep animals and humans apart. Filters are provided. Once a month the water is treated with a nontoxic pesticide, provided free by BASF chemical company. Volunteers teach about preventing water contamination.

It's easy to slip up, especially for a child. Up to 65 percent of those infected are children, probably because they're the main water carriers.

Guinea worm has debilitated mankind for centuries. Some suggest that guinea worms were the Biblical "fiery serpents" that plagued the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt. In Ghana, it's also called fireworm.

As the temperature soared above 90 degrees soon after dawn one morning in Savelugu, it was easy to sympathise with 15-year-old Abubakari Sadik who admitted, with a shamefaced grin, that he was infected last year, had even more worms this year, and knew very well why.

"It was hot and I was swimming and drinking in the dam," he said at a house where Carter Centre volunteers extract worms. More than 1 000 children have been treated there this year, and four worms have emerged from Abubakari's feet and legs. He has one more to go.

The emerging worm is wrapped around a bit of stick and, each day, an inch or more is extracted.

"It's so painful that I cannot sleep at night," he said.

 

[3113]

http://www.extension.uiuc.edu/photolib/lib17/inset/dogday_cicada_seen_head_on.jpg

Run Kiten! Run and don't look back! Save yourself!

 

[S-Des]

Run Kiten! Run and don't look back! Save yourself!

Or she could stay inside and find something else to do.

 

[carsonshepherd]

I hate cicadas. But the guinea worm sounds a thousand times worse. Cicadas are harmless, at least, and don't grow to be a meter long. Yikes!

 

[jomar]

I was just speculating with Rachlou about why they exist the way they do. I hadn't thought about the mass migration being a way of protecting themselves from predators. They live off the tree sap while between migrations. I wonder if it does something positive for the trees or another part of the underground ecology. I'll be interested to watch my daughter's reaction. I thought they were cool as hell (except when I wanted to climb a tree).

They do have a positive effect. Birds and other animals have a feast and when the cicadas die they leave a vast amount of nutrients to the soil. I think you can read the cicada cycle on the a trees growth rings - seems like I saw that somewhere.

 

[Dar~]

We get them every year. the air sounds like an electric current is going on there are so many. They do come out every 17 years, but we have them every year on a rotation I guess. Some went under in 81, some in 82, some in 83..ect. Creepy things.

 

[S-Des]

We get them every year. the air sounds like an electric current is going on there are so many. They do come out every 17 years, but we have them every year on a rotation I guess. Some went under in 81, some in 82, some in 83..ect. Creepy things.

I think the different breeds (with different cycles) have something to do with the climate (since Illinois has the 13 & 17 year varieties, as well as a few of the every year group). The article I found said we have the largest group anywhere....YAY! (I guess)

 

[Dar~]

yeah, they are gross and leave ugly little demon casings all over things.

http://home.earthlink.net/~snailstales/cicada.JPG

 

[rgraham666]

Could be worse. Could be army ants.

 

[neonlyte]

I was talking to Kiten, who's coming up next weekend. I asked if they had the cicadas down there, and was surprised when she indicated she had no idea what I was talking about. I was amused to inform her that we have this giant insect that comes out of the ground by the billions once every 17 years...and it's coming this week. If you've never heard of them, here's the info. It's possibly the strangest reproduction cycle in the entire animal (insect) kingdom.

The northern Illinois brood, which will emerge in late May 2007, has a reputation for the largest emergence of cicadas known anywhere. This is due to the size of the emergence and the research and subsequent reporting over the years by entomologists Monte Lloyd and Henry Dybas at the Field Museum in Chicago. During the 1956 emergence, they counted an average of 311 nymphal emergence holes per square yard of ground in a forested floodplain near Chicago. This translates to 1½ million cicadas per acre. In upland sites, they recorded 27 emergence holes per square yard, translating to about 133,000 per acre. This number is more typical of emergence numbers but is still a tremendous number of insects. For comparison, a city block contains about 3½ acres. When the cicadas start dying and dropping from the trees later in the spring, there are large numbers on the ground, and the odor from their rotting bodies is noticeable. In 1990, there were reports from people in Chicago having to use snow shovels to clear their sidewalks of the dead cicadas.

Cicadas are sometimes mistakenly called locusts. In actuality, they are not at all related to locusts, which are a kind of grasshopper. The male cicadas “sing” during the day to attract females.

Their "singing" is basically non-stop noise. They're harmless, but make virtually everything outside a nightmare. The last big migration was when I was 7. I still remember the trees being completely covered and not being able to take a step in the backyard without a loud "squish". Welcome to Illinois, Kiten.

http://www.extension.uiuc.edu/photolib/lib17/inset/dogday_cicada_seen_head_on.jpg

Thanks for this interesting snippet, I understand the males are virtually blind, you can get them to hump your finger if you move it near them.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

OMG I am soooooooooooooooooo sorry I opened this thread!!!!!!

*SHUDDER*

 

[S-Des]

Thanks for this interesting snippet, I understand the males are virtually blind, you can get them to hump your finger if you move it near them.

Oh, that creates such a WRONG mental image.

 

[Chantilyvamp]

Oooers, I've managed to miss Cicadas twice since I left. They are truely freaky and crunchy under foot but if you close your eyes tight and run like hell it'll help. Barring that pretend your walking on giant bubble wrap and look ahead and giggle like a madperson over all the popping

 

[kiten69]

They are truely freaky and crunchy under foot but if you close your eyes tight and run like hell it'll help. Barring that pretend your walking on giant bubble wrap and look ahead and giggle like a madperson over all the popping

*shudder*...they would have to be coming out during my visit...I'll be the tourist tippy-toeing through the masses of bugs!

 

[Guest]

We get them every year. the air sounds like an electric current is going on there are so many. They do come out every 17 years, but we have them every year on a rotation I guess. Some went under in 81, some in 82, some in 83..ect. Creepy things.

Yep. They are inevitable in late summer here.

Loud BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZing in August and September. Carcasses everywhere.

But they stick to the trees, pretty much. You don't have them underfoot.

I've been in Michigan when the caddis flies hatch, though. Jesus. Like mayflies.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b318/sweetsubsarahh/mayflylife.gif

A storm cloud of bugs emerge from the low-lying water areas. My uncle says it is good, it means the lake is healthy, will be good for fishing. OK.

They cover every available surface. Sides of buildings, light poles, vehicles, fences, everything. We had to pull over once because the sudden swarm covered the lights, the grill, the windshield . . .

This is how they look, but imagine multiple bugs about an inch apart covering the entire surface.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b318/sweetsubsarahh/caddis.jpg

In the morning, all the bugs that were on the building are on the ground. Walking to the car is quite disgusting as they are still alive, still squirming.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

And once I remember we stopped at a gas station to clean off the windshield. The lights were on so we thought they were open but no one was around. It was deserted.

It was just - odd.

After we stepped out of the car we realized that the flies were everywhere, on everything. And it was very quiet.

We got back into the car and drove the fuck away. Quickly.

*shudder*

 

[Selena_Kitt]

After we stepped out of the car we realized that the flies were everywhere, on everything. And it was very quiet.

We got back into the car and drove the fuck away. Quickly.

*shudder*

June bugs!!!!! *SHUDDER*

They're EVIL!!! Esp when you realize what that horrible crunching sound underfoot is ... ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I refuse to go outside when they're around. I don't care if I'm on fire or bleeding to death.

 

[S-Des]

Yep. They are inevitable in late summer here.

Loud BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZing in August and September. Carcasses everywhere.

But they stick to the trees, pretty much. You don't have them underfoot.

I meant to ask you if you got them as well. We don't get any of the yearly ones, but the 17 year ones are AWESOME. I just asked my daughter if she was ready and she said how excited she was. I can't wait for Memorial day with her & Kiten in the car. My daughter is known for lecturing Kiten on her fear of bugs (and spiders). That should be an excellent day!

 

[kiten69]

My daughter is known for lecturing Kiten on her fear of bugs (and spiders). That should be an excellent day!

 

[S-Des]

June bugs!!!!! *SHUDDER*

They're EVIL!!! Esp when you realize what that horrible crunching sound underfoot is ... ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I refuse to go outside when they're around. I don't care if I'm on fire or bleeding to death.

June bugs are nasty. They bite! On the bright side, when they're hanging on your screen door, you can flick them and they'll go a long way before you hear the POP against the wall. It's quite satisfying.

 

[Guest]

I meant to ask you if you got them as well. We don't get any of the yearly ones, but the 17 year ones are AWESOME. I just asked my daughter if she was ready and she said how excited she was. I can't wait for Memorial day with her & Kiten in the car. My daughter is known for lecturing Kiten on her fear of bugs (and spiders). That should be an excellent day!

They are dangerous around here to pets at times.

Usually dogs. They eat them to excess, actually. They can choke, they get sick . . .