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How do cicadas make noise? PJ Liesch holds up a male 17-year cicada and shows the tymbal under its wings. The tymbal is the small white section of the insect with thin, black lines.
Cicadas are known for the loud airborne sounds that males of most species make to attract mates. One member of this family, Brevisana brevis , the "shrill thorntree cicada", is the loudest insect in the world, able to produce a song that exceeds 100 decibels. [ 6 ]
At night, there will be other sounds, but not the sound of cicadas. "They don't sing at night," Layton said. "It won't be the cicadas keeping people up at night."
The earliest reports of 17-year cicadas came from the 17th century. While the cicadas may be a nuisance to some nowadays, for people a few hundred years ago, the bugs were truly terrifying.
An adult cicada's proboscis can pierce human skin when it is handled, which is painful but in no other way harmful. Cicadas are neither venomous nor poisonous and there is no evidence that they or their bites can transmit diseases. [13] Oviposition by female periodical cicadas damages pencil-sized twigs of woody vegetation.
Cicada nymphs drink sap from the xylem of various species of trees, including oak, cypress, willow, ash, and maple. While common folklore indicates that adults do not eat, they actually do drink plant sap using their sucking mouthparts. [58] [59] Cicadas excrete fluid in streams of droplets due to their high volume consumption of xylem sap. [60]
The most noticeable part of the cicada invasion blanketing the central United States is the sound — an eerie, amazingly loud song that gets in a person's ears and won't let much else in. “It ...
Magicicada cassini (originally spelled cassinii [a]), known as the 17-year cicada, Cassin's periodical cicada or the dwarf periodical cicada, [6] is a species of periodical cicada. It is endemic to North America. It has a 17-year life cycle but is otherwise indistinguishable from the 13-year periodical cicada Magicicada tredecassini.