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Periodical cicadas will emerge in 2024. Here’s what you need to know about these buzzing bugs.
Periodical cicadas aren’t present every spring, but when they do emerge, they come in loud, buzzing hordes. This year, trillions of these beady-eyed bugs are expected to appear in several U.S. states. Here’s what you need to know about cicadas.
Periodical cicadas
There are two types of periodical cicadas — ones that come out every 13 years and ones that come out every 17 years. They emerge in broods, which are labeled with Roman numerals.
In 2024, two broods will emerge: Brood XIX, which is on a 13-year cycle, and Brood XIII, which is on a 17-year cycle. These two broods haven’t matched up since 1803, according to research from the University of Connecticut.
Brood XIX will emerge across parts of the Midwest and Southeast, while Brood XIII will primarily be seen in Illinois.
Cicadas emerge from underground once the soil reaches 64 degrees, cicada expert Matthew Kasson told CBS News. So cicadas in South Carolina might emerge in April, when temperatures start to warm up there, while those in cooler climates like the upper Midwest might not emerge until June.
In 2024, they are expected sometime in May or early June, depending on the location, according to Ken Johnson, a horticulture educator at the University of Illinois.
How long do cicadas live above ground?
Cicadas spend the vast majority of their lives underground and come out at the end of the 13 or 17-year cycle. When they emerge, their job is to reproduce.
To attract mates, male cicadas start buzzing loudly — which is why the presence of cicadas is accompanied by a loud droning sound. They start this process about four to five days after they emerge, according to Johnson.
The females will flick their wings to signal to the males they want to mate, Kasson said.
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The females lay their eggs in woody plants, using their ovipositor, or egg-laying organ, to inject about 10-20 eggs into branches. Females can lay around 500 to 600 eggs, Johnson said.
The eggs hatch about six weeks after they’re laid, and the babies fall to the ground, eventually digging themselves into the soil, where they will remain for 13 or 17 years.
Their parents, however, die shortly after the mating process, lasting only about a month above ground.
Are cicadas dangerous?
While the emergence of trillions of bugs from the ground may seem apocalyptic, cicadas pose no threat to humans or other animals.
However, they molt when they emerge, leaving behind their crusty exoskeletons. And when they die, they can smell like roadkill, according to Johnson.
Wildlife like birds or snakes may eat cicadas, and it typically ins’t dangerous to do so.
Johnson warns against using insecticides to try to keep cicadas away from plants, because they aren’t effective, and animals that eat cicadas could be harmed by the chemicals.
Can you eat cicadas?
Humans can also eat cicadas, Johnson says. They are best eaten as adults after they have molted but before their exoskeleton hardens. People who are allergic to shellfish should avoid eating cicadas.
Some cicadas. however, could be infected with a sexually transmitted fungus called Massospora cicadina, Kasson told CBS News. It is unclear what the fungus does to organisms who eat infected cicadas.
Matthew Kasson
The fungus takes over a third of the cicada’s body, replacing it with a chalky plug. Their genitals fall off and they become hyper-sexual — even though they can no longer reproduce.
These so-called “zombie cicadas” continue about their normal routines, despite being taken over by a fungus, Kasson said.
“We know that a lot of animals are gobbling these cicadas up as they’re emerging — snakes and birds. Is it possible they’re having an effect on the animals that eat them? Yes, it is possible.” But, he said, less than 5% of cicadas are infected with the fungus and researchers have yet to observe any impact on other wildlife.
What do cicadas eat?
Cicadas use trees and bushes to get nutrition. They pierce small twigs and withdraw minerals and some carbohydrates from the water in plants, according to experts at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse.
Johnson advises not planting any new trees ahead of a periodical cicada emergence, because cicadas can damage them. If you do have small trees and shrubs, you can put netting around them to keep cicadas away — just make sure openings are no larger than 1/4 of an inch so the bugs can’t get in.
Are cicadas locusts?
Contrary to popular belief, cicadas are not “plague locusts.” They’re not even locusts, which are known to eat plants.
“People really shouldn’t worry. Cicadas are not defoliating insects and have nothing to do with locusts,” says Sandy Liebhold, research entomologist with the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Morgantown, West Virginia. “They won’t eat your plants, vegetables, or even the leaves of trees. They are emerging only to mate and lay eggs.”
Most of the trees cicadas eat will be fine, according to Purdue University.
Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves made his professional auto racing debut on Saturday at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“The Matrix” star, who qualified 31st out of 35 cars, ran as high as 21st before a single-car crash a little more than halfway through the 45-minute race briefly stopped him in his tracks.
Darron Cummings / AP
The 60-year-old spun into the grass without a collision on the exit of Turn 9 when he had about 21 minutes of racing left. He re-entered the course and continued driving, signaling he was uninjured.
Reeves finished 25th.
The actor is competing at Indianapolis in the Toyota GR Cup, a Toyota spec-racing series and a support series for this weekend’s Indy 8 Hour sports car event. He has a second race on Sunday.
Darron Cummings / AP
He is driving the No. 92 BRZRKR car, which is promoting his graphic novel “The Book of Elsewhere.” He is teammates with Cody Jones from “Dude Perfect.”
Reeves has previous racing experience as a former participant in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in the celebrity race. Reeves won the event in 2009.
A passenger successfully landed a small plane on Friday after the pilot had a medical emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 was traveling from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada to Monterey Regional Airport in California, with a pilot and one other person on board, the FAA said.
The pilot suffered an unspecified medical emergency while flying, the FAA said, forcing the passenger to take the controls and make an emergency landing at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The Kern Fire Department told CBS News affiliate KBAX that firefighters were called to a report of a medical emergency on the plane. The pilot was reported to be “incapacitated,” the fire department said. Firefighters saw the plane approach and land safely, then “chased” the plane down the runway in emergency vehicles to meet it.
The FAA did not release the passenger or pilot’s identities nor give an update on the pilot’s condition. The pilot was taken to an area hospital by ambulance. The passenger did not report any injuries.
The FAA and the National Transportation Security Board will investigate the incident, the FAA said.
Congolese authorities began vaccination against mpox on Saturday, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread from Congo to several African countries and beyond was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
The 265,000 doses donated to Congo by the European Union and the U.S. were rolled out in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.
Congo, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the Central African nation’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases. Officials in Congo previously told CBS News that they’ve struggled to diagnose patients and provide basic care in the vast country of 100 million people, where a fragile, under-resourced healthcare system is also burdened by the stigma associated with the virus.
Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in Congo are in children under age 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and front-line workers, Health Minister Roger Kamba said this week.
“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” Muboyayi ChikayaI, the minister’s chief of staff, said as he kicked off the vaccination.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
At least 3 million doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Africa before the disease prompted the 2022 global outbreak that saw wealthy countries quickly respond with vaccines from their stockpiles while Africa received only a few doses despite pleas from its governments.
However, unlike the global outbreak in 2022 that was overwhelmingly focused on gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, Dr. Dimie Ogoina, the chair of WHO’s mpox emergency committee, recently told reporters.
More than 34,000 suspected cases and 866 deaths from the virus have been recorded across 16 countries in Africa this year. That is a 200% increase compared to the same period last year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
A lack of diagnostic materials and basic medicines to treat the virus, which can improve survival rates, have also hampered efforts to contain the outbreak, and access to vaccines remains a challenge.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
The continent of 1.4 billion people has only secured a commitment for 5.9 million doses of mpox vaccines, expected to be available from October through December, Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters last week. Congo remains a priority, he said.
At the vaccination drive in Goma, Dr Jean Bruno Kibunda, the WHO representative, warned that North Kivu province is at a risk of a major outbreak due to the “promiscuity observed in the camps” for displaced people, as one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence unfolds there.
The news of the vaccination program brought relief to many in Congo, especially in hospitals that had been struggling to manage the outbreak. Doctors with several charities working in the country have told CBS News they’re overstretched and short on supplies, even having to use tents and mattresses on the floor of makeshift isolation wards to treat a constant influx of patients.
“If everyone could be vaccinated, it would be even better to stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, the medical director of Kavumu Hospital, one of the mpox treatment centers in eastern Congo.
Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings.
