Periodically cool
June 3, 2016 12:19 PM   Subscribe

Return of the Cicadas is a short film by Samuel Orr about the insects' (surprisingly beautiful) 17-year lifespans.

Orr has collected over 200 hours of cicada footage since 2007; he hopes to have an hour-long documentary released later this year.

Buggy film goodness previously on MetaFilter: time-lapse cicadas, time-lapse honeybees
posted by Gymnopedist (18 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
...until the last one fades away.
Meaning joins the other millions on the sidewalks, so one crunches one's way along.

The empty husks still gripping the trees is pretty cool, the noise is pretty cool, and they make great treats for dogs and cats.
(You can even take them to your pet- grasp the wings between your thumb and finger, and you can carry them around)
posted by MtDewd at 2:05 PM on June 3, 2016


the noise is pretty cool

It's INSANE how loud it gets in peak season. But I love it when it happens.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:33 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I have fond memories of the Great Eastern Brood of 1987. They were everywhere. One Sunday morning, a priest stood outside our church to greet worshippers; he had dotted his vestments with the placid little things. My grandmother and I were delighted, but the best part was the look on some people's faces as they struggled to remain polite and shake his hand. He spread his arms and grinned. "God loves all creatures."
posted by zennie at 2:48 PM on June 3, 2016 [7 favorites]


Is it just me getting old, or is this somehow always happening?

There was supposedly a big hatching of cicadas back in 2012 or 2013, wasn't there? There was also a similarly large brood in 2005 or so.

Does it take place in different parts of the US in different years, or something? Because this whole 17 Year Cicada thing seems like a lot of hype to me.
posted by Sara C. at 2:54 PM on June 3, 2016


Does it take place in different parts of the US in different years, or something? Because this whole 17 Year Cicada thing seems like a lot of hype to me.

It might vary geographically too, but I think the main thing is that there are different types of cicadas on different yearly rotations. Some Wikipedia-ing suggests that the short cycle is 2 years, and I could swear I once read something about a 24-year cycle, but google doesn't give me much so maybe I'm making that part up. There are cicadas every summer, as far as I can tell.

Disclaimer: I don't actually know anything about cicadas or insects in general, except that they were always around when I was a kid (we called them "locusts" a lot of the time) and I like them a lot.
posted by brennen at 3:10 PM on June 3, 2016


Some of the broods have much larger territories than others, and some places have two overlapping broods.

This vox.com cicada report has a map of all the broods. Click the map to see a larger version.

It looks like there's one of the broods emerging almost every year for a while. 2016 through 2021, then 2024 and 2025, then 2029 through 2032. Wikipedia has a list.

There are annual cicadas, too.
posted by jjj606 at 3:18 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Some also hit the snooze and wake up a year or two late. Brood 13 in Illinois always seems to be a 2 or 3 year event.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:53 PM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Their parents partied like it's 1999.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:59 PM on June 3, 2016


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
posted by carping demon at 9:04 PM on June 3, 2016


"Annual" cicadas are a bit weird (or, rather, they're normal, but the name is weird). It's not that they have a lifecycle of 1 year, but that they have short lifecycles and there's a bunch of them, with overlapping cycles, so you will see that species of cicada every year.
posted by Bugbread at 4:14 AM on June 4, 2016


I found this lovely and moving. Our cicadas emerge in late summer, and their buzz-saw serenade is poignant and evocative. I delight in finding the golden shells left behind when adults emerge.

Although a creature's life may be nothing like mine I think it can be no less worth celebrating.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:58 AM on June 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Evolution creates and uses prime numbers - that's pretty cool just by itself.

But what do they say to each other when they crawl out of the ground? "Have you seen what's happened to mobile phones? Insane!" "I know. I wonder if my Geocities account is still active?" "Yeah, can't wait to see how my pets.com investment is doing..."
posted by Devonian at 6:33 AM on June 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's INSANE how loud it gets in peak season. But I love it when it happens.

I have searched the internet in vain for a scan of the old Far Side comic that shows Noah's Ark with a note posted saying "Someone tell the cicadas to shut up!"
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:24 AM on June 4, 2016


Yeah, how DID all those different cicada species get to the Ark to survive the Flood? All of the cycles would have to coincide at just the right time... which gives me an idea; if we plot all the cycles back in time, we can find the only possible Ark windows.

Flood science, guys!
posted by Devonian at 8:24 AM on June 4, 2016 [5 favorites]


OK - in my search for serious funding from the Discovery Institute, I have developed an 'app', as I believe these things are now called, in Quite BASIC to determine all possible Ark years before Jesus based on the start of the Universe in 4004 BC, and positing that the two periodic cicada cycles of 13 and 17 years started synchronously at that start.


CICADA DETERMINED ARK EVENT WINDOW DETECTOR V 0.1

13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 3783 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 3562 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 3341 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 3120 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 2899 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 2678 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 2457 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 2236 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 2015 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1794 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1573 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1352 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1131 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 910 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 689 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 468 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 247 BC
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 26 BC

I reckon this is new research and thus worthy of at least 100k for a year's further investigation.
posted by Devonian at 9:08 AM on June 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


important Flood News Update! I have now run the detector for coincident cycles in the modern era - from 1500 AD - on the grounds that we can COMPLETELY VERIFY the Genesis story's LITERAL TRUTH by matching the simulator's dates with known coincidences. Et voila:

CICADA DETERMINED ARK EVENT WINDOW V 0.1A
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1521 AD
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1742 AD
13+17 CYCLES COINCIDE IN YEAR 1963 AD

It's possible that the 1742 event was recorded, but absolutely certain that the 1963 event would have been. If any entomologist could verify this, I'll cut them some points on my Discovery Institute funding package.

(If there was no coincident hatching in 1976, then obviously God doesn't exist. Which is also a result, but no creato-cash...)

(OK mods, I'll stop now...)
posted by Devonian at 9:22 AM on June 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


Cicada-mania also has some excellent information about the 17 year and 13 year periodicals. Link goes to the 17-year brood map.

Some interesting things to note:
  • There are three different species groups of Magicicada. Each brood consists of members of several different species. Different species' males have different songs.
  • 13-year broods and 17-year broods comprise different sets of species, but each 17-year species is most closely related to one of the three 13-year species, and vice-versa; for example, Magicidad tredecim (a 13-year) and Magicicada septendecim (a 17-year). The "sister" species are 13-year and 17-year, so Devonian's above-noted "coincidence" years are probably extremely important.
  • Also important are stragglers. Members of each brood can sometimes emerge either 1 or 4 years early or 1 or 4 years late. 17 year stragglers are usually early, 13 year stragglers are usually late. This seems to actually permit gene flow between broods.
  • Broods can go extinct. This has happened to 17-year broods 11 and 21. Brood X is in trouble. Brood II, in 2012, was also a pretty unimpressive event. Extinction can happen for a lot of reasons, but it seems like in the last several decades that human land-use change is a big factor. When we cut down trees that the nymphs are feeding on, all the nymphs die, and that can be hundreds of thousands on the roots of just a single tree.
  • Mass periodical cicada emergence events like these only happen in Eastern North America. While other cicadas around the world emerge yearly (usually in late summer), they do have multi-year life cycles; they're just not all in sync. However, none of them have nymphal periods as long as the periodical cicadas.
Source: I am a grad student who works across the hall from Chris Simon. There's still a great deal of stuff unknown and not understood about periodical cicadas -- probably because studying them takes so long.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 7:11 AM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


they make great treats for dogs and cats.

Protip: Koi love them.
 
posted by Herodios at 10:10 AM on June 6, 2016


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