After 17 years, the cicadas have arrived

Brut America

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?

Transcript

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.

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