The countdown is over.
Cicadas are starting to pop up in the Chicago area and throughout Illinois.
Here you will find some answers to frequently asked questions.
Do people eat crickets?
For the first time in seventeen years, trillions of periodical crickets are here – and as you may have heard, you can indeed eat them.
It just so happens that the members of CBS 2’s on-air talent roster have been eating crickets on television – more than once.
Cicada map of Illinois from 2024
There are two groups of periodical crickets — those that appear every 13 years and those that appear every 17 years. Crickets live underground for most of their lives emerge once the ground reaches 64 degrees.
Why are crickets so loud?
As explained in Science Daily, crickets make their sounds using a corrugated exoskeleton structure in the thorax called a tymbal. The tymbal is an organ with the specific purpose of producing sound, a category it shares with the rattle of a rattlesnake – which some say sounds a lot like a cicada.
But while rattlesnakes rattle their tails as a warning when threatened, crickets have no such ominous intent. Only the males make the sound and call to attract a female mate.
Cicadas undergo some fairly complex contortions to make their tymbals produce such sounds. Derke Hughes of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center told Science Daily that if a human body were like that of a cicada, it would have “a thick set of muscles on either side of your torso that would allow you to collapse your chest so far that all your ribs would buckle inward one by one into a deformed position. Releasing the muscle allows your ribs to return to their normal shape, and pulling the muscle again would repeat this.
Cicadas are very loud indeed. Extension entomologist PJ Liesch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison told CBS 58 in Milwaukee that a grove of trees with a bunch of singing and screeching crickets can reach 70 to 80 decibels — a similar volume to a vacuum cleaner.
How long do crickets live?
Cicadas spend the vast majority of their lives underground, emerging at the end of the 13 or 17 year cycle. When they emerge, their job is to reproduce.
To attract mates, male crickets begin to buzz loudly. Therefore, a loud booming sound accompanies the presence of crickets. According to Ken Johnson of the University of Illinois, they begin this process about four to five days after they emerge.
Matthew Kasson, an associate professor of mycology and forest pathology at West Virginia University, said the females wave their wings toward signal to the males that they want to mate.
Johnson said females can lay 500 to 600 eggs. They lay their eggs in woody plants, using their ovipositor or egg-laying organ to inject about 10-20 eggs into branches.
The eggs hatch about six weeks after being laid and the babies fall to the ground and eventually burrow themselves into the ground, where they will remain for 13 or 17 years.
However, their parents die shortly after the mating process, which lasts only about a month above ground.
Which animals eat crickets?
How do creepy crawlers interact with furry friends, and What should pet owners know about the swarms that can be expected everywhere?
“They are not poisonous to pets. They will not sting or bite your pet,” said Dr. Cynthia Gonzalez of Family Pet Animal Hospital in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. “The only problem that would arise for your pet is if he were to ingest a large amount of it, or if he is a smaller dog if he were to eat a small piece of the exoskeleton – sometimes that can really irritate his gastrointestinal tract. ”
