Cicada Profile
Human language is one of the straws that theists and other elitist groups grasp at to differentiate humanity from the Animal kingdom, but you don’t have to look far to discredit this idea. Dolphins converse across dialects and accents; elephants, too, have recently been discovered to use names in their vocal communications.
But there are even some insects that use human language. The word Cicada is onomatopoeic from the Latin interpretation of the sound the bug makes.
This technically means cicadas spend all day screaming their own name in human language.
Checkmate, elitists!
Cicada Facts Overview
| Habitat: | Deciduous and pine forest |
| Location: | Tropical and temperate regions |
| Lifespan: | Generally a few years, sometimes more than 20 |
| Size: | Smallest can be 16mm, largest is 7 cm (2.8 in) with 20cm (8 in) wingspan |
| Weight: | Unknown |
| Colour: | Varied, usually browns to greens, sometimes bright contrasting colours |
| Diet: | Plant sap |
| Predators: | Birds, lizards, larger insects, reptiles |
| Top Speed: | Around 16 km/h (10 mph) |
| No. of Species: | 3000+ |
| Conservation Status: | Most are not listed, some Critically Endangered (IUCN) |
Bugs are, by definition, suckers, but some are worse than others. Wheel bugs can give a nasty bite, and aphids can ruin your harvest entirely.
Cicadas are the nice guys of the sucking world, choosing to feed painlessly on the outer layer of plant juices, without harming their host plant and just doing their thing, which is a thing that can take more than 17 years!
There are literally thousands of cicada species, ranging from the very small to the enormous, but they’re all known to be rather loud, and some of the noisiest animals in the world.
Interesting Cicada Facts
1. They’re sap suckers
Colloquially it’s appropriate to call anything small and without a backbone a “bug”, but be careful!
Do that in taxonomist circles and they’ll tie you to a post in a public park and walk ominously in circles around you, waving The Origin of Species and chanting “Shame!”.
In biology, the word Bug refers to a specific order of “bug”: an insect order known as Hemiptera, or the true bugs. Hemipterans look superficially like beetles, but can easily be told apart by their piercing mouthparts and lack of a shield. Except in shield bugs, which are, in fact, bugs, but we can ignore those for now.
Cicadas are in this bug order, and have the corresponding piercing mouthparts. And since the cicada is too polite to be a body fluids sucker like some true bugs, it’s evolved to suck the sap, or xylem, from trees.
2. They have a poor diet
For those who’ve managed to erase the tedious memory of sitting through plant biology, xylem transports water and soluble nutrients up from the roots to the rest of the plant.
Phloem is where most of the sugar is transported, along with proteins and other nutritious organic molecules, but it’s situated deeper inside the plant than the xylem, so animals that target phloem often cause a lot more damage.
Aphids feed on phloem, as do many of the other most important pests on human crop plants, and this is what makes them so destructive. Cicadas are quite content with just tapping into the xylem beneath the surface and try not to cause too much damage.
But this is a nutrient-poor alternative to phloem, so to compensate, the cicada must drink a lot more of it to get the calories they need. As for essential amino acids, cicadas make use of symbiotic bacteria to poop those out for the bug to eat, because the xylum is so lacking.
Cicadas have permeable exoskeletons to permit water loss, which helps them shed the extra moisture from such a liquid diet and concentrate what little goodness there is to digest inside their bodies.
3. Magic Cicada
Cicadas spend most of their lives sucking on xylem from beneath the surface soil. As they get larger, they mature and finally emerge to mate and make all that racket you hear in Summer. This emergence is a cleverly-synchronised event that nobody quite understands, and can involve billions of the horny little bugs coming out all on the same day.
Some cicadas are so good at timing their emergence that seven species of so-called periodical cicadas have been given the genus Magicicada.
These are 13 and 17-year cicadas, meaning they stay under the ground for up to 17 years before all emerging at once, in the same season, like magic. Of the 3000 + species, none other is known to do this.
The emergence is thought to be influenced by soil temperature, but it’s still a bit of a mystery how it’s timed so well. Adults of these species will have to make the most of their time on the surface, as they only live for a few weeks after emerging. 1
4. They’re ancient
Cicadas have perhaps been tightening up the choreography of these precise behaviors for 150 million years.
Fossils show the earliest cicada-like animals evolving in the Late Triassic, and the earliest unambiguous cicadas were well established by the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Around 100 species are thought to have made up the family Palaeontinidae, a family of giant, moth-looking cicadas from the Early Cretaceous, but while these were pretty big bugs at around 7.5cm (3 inches) long, they were actually no bigger than today’s largest examples!
5. They’re huge
The empress cicada, Megapomponia imperatoria, is the largest known cicada, at around the same length as the extinct giants above.
They have a wingspan of up to 20 cm, which as any considerate romantic partner will concur, is far more than you really need.
These giant bugs are more than a mouthful, and honestly have no business being this big, considering how powerful ordinary-sized cicadas can be. A cicada this size will likely have some very powerful vibrating membranes. 2
6. Vibrating membranes
Content with their low-nutrient xylem diets, cicadas are notoriously non-consumerist animals, and this has a lot to do with a pair of membranes, called tymbals, at the base of the abdomen.
These tymbals are surrounded by a stiff elastic ring of muscle. Like twanging an elastic band, these membranes are pulled down and then released at a rate of 100 to 500 times a second! More muscles control the shape of the elastic ring to adjust pitch and volume, giving the cicada its characteristic, and deafening, sound.
This is what corporations fear the most. If geneticists could figure out how to grow vibrating membranes inside the stiff elastic rings of humans, we would become so preoccupied that we’d stop buying junk we don’t need and the planet would be saved.
7. They’re loud
Using your elastic ring to slap your membranes isn’t just fun, it’s noisy. Cicadas are one of the loudest animals on land, said to reach 120 decibels, and possibly [even louder].
One African species, Brevisana brevis is as loud as a chainsaw, and it’s not short of competition from all over the world.
These incredible feats of aural sex communication bring males and females together across vast distances and likely play a role in keeping anything with eardrums from predating upon the cicada. 3
Cicada Fact-File Summary
Scientific Classification
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hemiptera |
| Family: | Cicadidae |
| Superfamily: | Cicadoidea |
Fact Sources & References
- (2023), “Do Adult Periodical Cicadas Actually Eat?”, entomology today.
- (2018), “Cicada Mania”, Cicada Mania.
- “Loudest”, UNIVERSITY of NEBRASKA–LINCOLN.