Red-eyed, nasty-looking, and super loud, they were last sighted in 2004. Now, they are crawling out of the ground in the millions.
Are you ready for the cicadas?
Are you ready for the cicadas?
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🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00There'll be birth, there'll be death, there'll be romance in the treetops, there'll be wicked
00:07sex, there'll be predators.
00:08It's going to be better than an episode of Game of Thrones, so go out and enjoy the cicadas.
00:25Why so many cicadas?
00:27Cicadas have one of the most bizarre strategies for survival of any creature on planet Earth.
00:33It's called predator satiation.
00:35They're going to emerge in such massive numbers synchronously, they'll fill the belly of every
00:41predator that wants to eat them, and there'll still be enough left over to perpetuate their
00:47species.
00:48Boom.
00:49We saw one, and we thought, oh, we're having a good time now, and then the sidewalk started
00:59moving, and then the grass started moving.
01:01No one can say exactly how many there are.
01:04Estimates range as high as 10 trillion, perhaps the largest insect emergence on Earth.
01:20They look ugly, and they're scary, and they just look nasty.
01:31Do you like the noise?
01:32Yes.
01:33It's really cool.
01:34What does it sound like?
01:35It sort of sounds like a cat purring.
01:38I can make the sound.
01:39You can?
01:40Yeah.
01:41It's like a cat purring.
02:10They have a startling effect to human populations sometimes, but that's why we're trying to
02:22get the word out.
02:23They're not a biting insect, nor a stinging insect.
02:26They'll be a general annoyance, perhaps, but no real harm otherwise.
02:41Cincinnati was hit in the middle of the month.
02:43Next came Washington, New York, and Boston.
02:46A single suburban garden can play host to millions of them.
02:50Three weeks of the deafening buzz, then the lawn will disappear under a carpet of little
02:55corpses.
03:00Nobody knows how the 17-year cicada counts the passing years.
03:04Other species have 13- or 7-year cycles.
03:08But it's the 17-year variety that makes the biggest forms and the most noise.
03:12The latest generation of cicadas will soon fall silent.
03:16Their offspring are already burrowing underground to wait for the year 2004.
03:21Until then, the young cicadas and the residents of the eastern states can rest in peace.