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Welcome to Arts and Ideas In the Air, Wondrous Wednesday, where I talk about something wondrous.
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Today I thought I'd talk about cicadas.
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So, I don't really know too much about cicadas, but they are coming at the end of May.
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Basically, in this region, every 17 years, cicadas come out in force.
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Most years there's some cicadas around, but every 17 years they just swarm out of the ground and they're just like everywhere.
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I was down in D.C. the last time this happened, 2004, and it was kind of fun, kind of interesting.
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Although, you know, there's an awful lot of pavement down there.
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So, I'm looking forward to being around here where there's a lot more trees.
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And this is, of course, going to be the first time that ANI was in existence during a cicada coming out party.
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And basically, it seems that the idea of a cicada is to just overwhelm their predators, essentially.
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So that there's no predators that can be adapted to kind of eat them.
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Predators will eat them, but not in sufficient quantities to diminish their numbers.
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It's a very interesting strategy, evolutionary-wise.
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They spend 17 years kind of just hanging around in the ground, and then they pop out, you know, for a few weeks to create the next generation.
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But so it's a very, you know, slow generational change, really, which I find very interesting.
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And maybe one reason they can do that is because they don't have, you know, you might say predators that are adapting to eat them, right?
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So there's an arms race between them and something else because they're not around enough.
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There's also something interesting about the fact that it's 17.
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Namely, it's a prime number, and that's to help avoid accidental, you know, coinciding with something else, basically.
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You know, whether it's other cicada populations or predators, I don't really know.
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But, you know, if something had, like, let's say, you know, a cycle of, you know, smaller numbers that coincide easier.
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You know, like something like if you had 6, then something with cycles of 2 would end up with 6.
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Things with cycle 3 would end up with 6.
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That's just sort of how it would work.
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But if you have a prime number, like 17, you know, the, like, nothing's going to really coincide with that except, you know, every 17 cycles, which is a really long time.
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For something.
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And so it really helps prevent accidental kind of overlaps or discovery, etc.
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And I guess 17 is just, you know, like the predators just really have no memory of it.
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You know, it's been, like, several generations for birds and squirrels, and just about anything will eat these critters.
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But, you know, they have their own food supplies, so they're not starving, and they eat the cicadas, and they're kind of full, and they just can't eat enough.
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So that's kind of the cicada strategy. It's really quite interesting.
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They can also, I don't actually know that they do eat stuff, but you could imagine that they could eat a lot more stuff, just devastate it once, and then, like, you know, over 17 years, things will grow back, and they don't have to worry about things.
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I don't actually know if that's what happens at all with them, but maybe with some other ones.
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So, yeah, that's cicadas. I'm looking forward to it. Apparently, they can be so loud in such numbers that it's basically like lawnmowers going on.
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So I'm not looking forward to that. And also when they kind of all die off, it can be a little smelly, apparently.
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So, it's also possible to eat them. If you do, you should look up about how to eat them, but essentially you don't want to wait too long in the season because then they get kind of tough and hard.
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But, you know, earlier on they are a little more soft and juicy, and apparently you can cook them up and they can taste like shrimp.
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So, if you're brave, you may have some cicadas for dinner in just a couple of months.
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So, I'm looking forward to that time.
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So that's Wondrous Wednesday, and I will see you when I see you.