The last time Brood XIX and Brood XII emerged from underground at the same time, Thomas Jefferson was president

The last time Brood XIX and Brood XII emerged from underground at the same time, Thomas Jefferson was president

They look a little like cockroaches and have bulging orange eyes, and trillions of them are about to erupt from the earth in much of the midwestern and eastern United States. The emergence of two groups of cicadas will assemble a chorus of the insects not seen in several hundred years, experts say.

The simultaneous appearance of the two cicada broods – known as Brood XIX and Brood XII – is a rare event, not having occurred since 1803, a year when Thomas Jefferson was US president. “It’s really exciting. I’ve been looking forward to this for many years,” said Catherine Dana, an entomologist who specializes in cicadas at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “For the public, it’s going to be a really special experience.”

There are thousands of species of cicadas around the world but only 10 are considered periodical – having a life cycle that involves the juvenile cicadas living underground and feeding on plant sap for years before emerging en masse to the surface.

This year will see Brood XIX, the largest of all periodical cicada groups, emerge after a 13-year dormancy underground at the same time as Brood XII, a smaller group that appears every 17 years. The emergence will occur in spring, as early as this month in some places, and will see trillions of cicadas pop up in as many as 16 states, from Maryland to Oklahoma and from Illinois to Alabama.

  • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
    44·
    7 months ago

    Note that these broods are mostly not in the same region, so most places will see a fairly normal amount of cicadas this year.

    Eastern Illinois gets both broods, it’s gonna be WILD there.

    • Ejh3k@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24·
      7 months ago

      I am super excited because I am in the overlap. And I get the eclipse! Real banner year for me.

      • atx_aquarian@lemmy.world
        10·
        7 months ago

        Pretty interesting getting to see these rare but predictable things coinciding and thinking about how it might have seemed like a series of omens to people in the past.

        • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
          8·
          7 months ago

          People of the present too. I hope this doesn’t ramp up some conspiracy cult ala QAnon due to the timing of everything. People are already spreading crazy beliefs over the eclipse.

          • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
            5·
            7 months ago

            They are 100% going make allusions to the plagues of Egypt. Then they will blame the transgender people because they wore the “wrong pair” of trousers.

  • ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.mlEnglish
    13·
    7 months ago

    Generally, a 13-year brood emerges in the same year as a 17-year brood roughly every 5-6 years, though most of the 17-year broods are not in contact with a 13-year brood, so the different cicadas are clearly separated in space. A co-emergence involving adjacent broods of different life cycles is something that happens only roughly every 25 years. Any two specific broods of different life cycles co-emerge only every 221 years.

    https://cicadas.uconn.edu/

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting that these two broods are co-emerging, but broods co-emerge more frequently than hundreds of years

    • shani66@ani.social
      2·
      7 months ago

      Yeah, thought i was delirious from sleep deprivation there for a second. I’m pretty sure a co emergence has happened in the last few years.

  • wolfylow@lemmy.world
    12·
    7 months ago

    Man, when we (2 Brits) lived in Sydney a couple of years ago, we unwittingly went camping during a mass cicada hatching. The cicada grubs were coming out of the ground and crawling up everything (tent, chairs, us!) to hatch.

    We were 2 hopeless pommies fairly new to the Aussie bush and didn’t know what on earth was going on. Utterly freaked. Coupled with all the other crazy wildlife we encountered (stick insects the size of your forearm, lizard things the size of me!) and it’s amazing we didn’t pack up and leave. And also, I mean, the fact that half of Aussie animals can legitimately kill you.

    But we stuck it out and had an awesome time. Cicadas were pretty amazing in the end - left fantastic exoskeletons (a bit like Geiger’s alien) and were deafening.

  • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
    176·
    7 months ago

    Bracing for huh?

    Yeah, I remember when I lost my family to cicadas last time.

    Oh wait, that never happened, things were just kind of noisy off and on for a while and everything was fine.

    I don’t think anyone is bracing for this.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
      16·
      7 months ago

      The areas with both broods(my area) may have hazardous road conditions, their squished corpses are slippery.

      The last one we had about a decade ago was pretty crazy. They were everywhere and it was noisy everywhere. I live next to some woods/prairie, so I am expecting to get the worse of it. Not terribly concerned, more excited.

  • rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social
    8·
    7 months ago

    They look a little like cockroaches

    Not at all! And given that they are still emerging in heavily developed areas, I think this should be a celebration. We’ve wiped out so much else.

  • revelrous@sopuli.xyz
    6·
    7 months ago

    “For the public, it’s going to be a really special experience.”

    Condolences Springfield, IL.