This is a beautiful little film documenting the life cycle of 17 year cicadas. From PBS station WFYI:
After spending 17 years underground as juveniles, they emerge for a brief, cacophonous population explosion aboveground, where they transform into adults, mate, lay eggs and die off after only a few weeks.
Producer Samuel Orr followed the life cycle of Brood X, which made its momentous ascension in the spring of 2004. It accounted for one of the largest insect outbreaks on Earth.
6 minutes. Link to Video
Some fascinating cicada facts from the University of Illinois:
- Cicadas are one the world’s longest living insects.
- There are 15 broods of cicadas in North America. Broods I though X, XIII, and XIV are 17-year broods and Broods XIX, XXII, and XXIII are 13-year broods. Some years no broods emerge.
- Sometimes cicadas emerge a year or two later or earlier than scheduled. This is called “straggling”
- Cicadas are not locusts. Locusts are migratory grasshoppers.
- Cicadas are edible.
