Cicadas Swarm Wide Portions of US

Noisy bugs emerge after 13 years underground

June 27, 2011

Two cicadas hang upside down on a branch, facing in opposite directions, to mate.

The cicadas are back.

Over the past few weeks, across a wide swath of the eastern United States, the notoriously noisy bugs have emerged by the billions from their long, underground adolescence.

On a muggy afternoon at the farmers’ market in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri, the cicada invasion is in full force and local residents have mixed feelings about it.

“I just like holding them and putting them on the trees and stuff,” says Matt Covington, 10, who loves the insects. “They tickle when they crawl on you, it’s fun.”

Male cicadas have two white organs called tymbals that they use to make their characteristic loud song to attract mates.

Nineteen-year-old Lauren Pierce takes the opposite view.

“Oh my gosh, they look like little devils, and I don’t like it,” she says. “I think they’re stinking up my neighborhood. They’re rotting everywhere and they smell bad and they’re really loud in some places, and…it’s kind of a nuisance.”

They are definitely make a lot of noise. The males sing to attract mates. Chris Hartley, an entomologist at the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Chesterfield, says they make that sound by vibrating an organ on the side of their thorax called a tymbal. They actually use their wings to amplify and resonate the sound out, which adds to the racket.