The 12-Year Cycles of the Five Elements

Element	12-Year Cycle	12-Year Cycle
Wood	1924–35	1984–95
Fire	1936–47	1996–2007
Earth	1948–59	2008–19
Metal           Water	1960–71     1972-83	2020–31       2032-43

Astrology Associations

Characteristic	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Planets	Venus	Jupiter	Mercury	Mars	Saturn
Heavenly Creatures	Azure Dragon（青龙）	Vermilion Bird (朱雀)	Yellow Dragon (黄龙)	White Tiger (白虎)	Black Tortoise (玄武)
Heavenly Stems	1st (Jia 甲), 2nd (Yi 乙)	3rd (Bing 丙), 4th (Ding丁)	5th (Wu 戊), 6th (Ji 己)	7th (Geng 庚), 8th (Xin 辛)	9th (Ren 壬), 10th (Gui 癸)
Virtue	Benevolence	Propriety	Fidelity/ Honesty	Righteousness	Wisdom
Represents	Creativity, luxuriance, blooming, and flourishing	Enthusiasm and passion	Nurturing, stability, and security	Ambition, determination, progress, and persistence	Aptitude, brightness, agile mind, and mental strength

Chinese Medicine Associations

Characteristic	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Taste	Sour	Bitter	Sweet	Spicy	Salty
Sensory Organs	Eyes	Tongue	Mouth	Nose	Ear

 Interactions Between the Five Elements

Five Element Theory asserts that the world changes according to the five elements' generating or overcoming relationships. Generating and overcoming are the complementary processes — the yin and yang — of Five Element Theory.

Generating processes promote development, while overcoming processes control development. By promoting and restraining, systems are harmonized and balance is maintained.
Generating Interactions

The generating interactions of the five elements are like the conception, gestation, birth, and nurture relationship between a mother and a baby. Such element pairs are deeply attached, and together imply success and luck.

The five generating interactions are fueling, forming, containing, carrying, and feeding:

Wood fuels fire.
Fire forms earth (volcanoes, ash, etc.).
Earth contains metal.
Metal carries water (buckets, pipes, etc.).
Water feeds wood (trees, plants, etc.).

Overcoming Interactions

The overcoming interactions of the five elements are like the acts of hostility between two sides in a war. The five overcoming interactions are melting, penetrating, separating, absorbing, and quenching:

Fire melts metal
Metal penetrates wood (chopping, sawing, drilling, nailing, screwing).
Wood separates earth (tree roots breaking up soil/rock).
Earth absorbs water.
Water quenches fire.

Five Elements Theory and the Chinese Zodiac

Everybody belongs to one of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs and a 12-year cycle according to the year in which they were born. One of the five elements is associated with each of the Chinese zodiac signs and 12-year cycles.

Chinese astrology asserts that personality and luck are determined by both zodiac sign (element) and 12-year cycle element, while life force (or qi) is determined by birth date and time. Use the tool on the left to find your Chinese zodiac sign and element. 

https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-zodiac/china-five-elements-philosophy.htm

Circadian rhythms are physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle. They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism's environment.

 
Sleeping at night and being awake during the day is an example of a light-related circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are found in most living things, including animals, plants, and many tiny microbes. The study of circadian rhythms is called chronobiology.

 
Biological clocks are an organism’s innate timing device. They’re composed of specific molecules (proteins) that interact in cells throughout the body.

Biological clocks are found in nearly every tissue and organ. Researchers have identified similar genes in people, fruit flies, mice, fungi, and several other organisms that are responsible for making the clock’s components.

A master clock in the brain coordinates all the biological clocks in a living thing, keeping the clocks in sync. In vertebrate animals, including humans, the master clock is a group of about 20,000 nerve cells (neurons) that form a structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN.
 

The SCN is located in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus and receives direct input from the eyes. Natural factors within the body produce circadian rhythms. 

However, signals from the environment also affect them. The main cue influencing circadian rhythms is daylight. This light can turn on or turn off genes that control the molecular structure of biological clocks. 

Changing the light-dark cycles can speed up, slow down, or reset biological clocks as well as circadian rhythms. Yes. Circadian rhythms can influence sleep-wake cycles, hormone release, eating habits and digestion, body temperature, and other important bodily functions.

 

Biological clocks that run fast or slow can result in disrupted or abnormal circadian rhythms. Irregular rhythms have been linked to various chronic health conditions, such as sleep disorders, obesity, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, and seasonal affective disorder. In this image of a brain of the fruit fly Drosophila, the time-of-day information flowing through the brain has been visualized by staining the neurons involved: 

Clock neurons (shown in blue) function as pacemakers by communicating with neurons that produce a short protein called leucokinin (LK) (red), which, in turn, relays the time signal to other neurons, called LK-R neurons (green).

Studies using fruit flies have been key to finding the molecular gears of biological clocks and the cells that control circadian rhythms. 

 

Circadian rhythms help determine our sleep patterns. The body’s master clock, or SCN, controls the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. It receives information about incoming light from the optic nerves, which relay information from the eyes to the brain. When there is less light—like at night—the SCN tells the brain to make more melatonin so you get drowsy.
 

Researchers are studying how shift work as well as exposure to light from mobile devices during the night may alter circadian rhythms and sleep-wake cycles.
 

How are circadian rhythms related to jet lag? People get jet lag when travel disrupts their circadian rhythms. When you pass through different time zones, your biological clocks will be different from the local time. For example, if you fly east from California to New York, you “lose” 3 hours.

 

When you wake up at 7:00 a.m. on the east coast, your biological clocks are still running on west coast time, so you feel the way you might feel at 4:00 a.m. Your biological clocks will reset, but this often takes a few days.

 

Scientists learn about circadian rhythms by studying humans or by using organisms with similar biological clock genes, including fruit flies and mice. 

 

Researchers doing these experiments can control the subject’s environment by altering light and dark periods. Then they look for changes in gene activity or other molecular signals. This research helps us understand how biological clocks work and keep time.

Scientists also study organisms with irregular circadian rhythms to identify which genetic components of biological clocks may be broken. 

 

Understanding what makes biological clocks tick may lead to treatments for sleep disorders, obesity, mental health disorders, jet lag, and other health problems.
 

It can also improve ways for individuals to adjust to nighttime shift work. Learning more about the genes responsible for circadian rhythms will also help us understand biological systems and the human body.

 

NIGMS is a part of the National Institutes of Health that supports basic research to increase our understanding of biological processes and lay the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. For more information on the Institute’s research and training programs, visit https://www.nigms.nih.gov.

https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.aspx 

Massospora cicadina is a fungal pathogen that infects only 13 and 17 year periodical cicadas. Infection results in a "plug" of spores that replaces the end of the cicada's abdomen while it is still alive, leading to infertility, disease transmission, and eventual death of the cicada.  

M. cicadina belongs to the phylum Zoopagomycota, subphylum Entomophthoromycota, and order Entomophthorales. About a dozen other species of Massospora are known, each of which attacks a specific species of cicada. M. cicadina was first observed by Leidy in 1850 but was not described until 1879 by Charles Horton Peck.
 

Peck placed the fungus among the class Coniomycetes, but in 1888 Thaxter and Forbes placed it instead in Entomophthoraceae. 

 

It wasn't until 1921 that the pathogen's microscopic characteristics were thoroughly studied by Speare, who found that conidia germinate quickly when placed in a nutrient substance. M. cicadina infects Magicicada species, which are 13 and 17-year periodical cicadas.

 

Magicicada species spend most of their lives underground as nymphs, feeding on xylem fluids of tree roots. They dig upwards through the soil to molt into adults and emerge above ground after 13 or 17 years.  

Adult periodical cicadas live only for 4 to 6 weeks, to mate and deposit their eggs. Females attract males for mating by flicking their wings, while males produce a mating call. After mating, female cicadas deposit up to 600 or more eggs in V-shaped cuts on tree roots (usually 20 eggs at a time in each cut).  

Spores of M. cicadina are capable of germinating and infecting cicadas at as little as one year but may remain dormant for either 13 or 17 years before becoming active. This synchronous cycle corresponds with local periods of cicada emergence. 

M. cicadina is thought to be the only pathogen that coincides with its host's 17-year life cycle; because of this it is considered to have the longest life cycle of any fungus. M. cicadina resting spores do not require a dormant period: They are capable of germinating and infecting periodical cicadas after less than a year from their introduction into soil.

Cicadas are believed to become infected by fungal spores as the nymphs dig tunnels to the soil surface days before their emergence as adults. Initial infection takes place while cicada nymphs dig their way to the surface of the soil before emerging as adults.

It is presumed that the emerging cicadas are infected by resting spores they encounter in the soil. In early stages of infection, hyphal bodies of the fungus are found in the host tissues.

Later, Stage I infected adult cicadas produce haploid conidia, forming the asexual stage of the fungus. Conidia produced by Stage I infected cicadas are capable of infecting other adult cicadas.

There is no difference between the proportion of male to female nymphs being infected by spores in this stage. In the early stages of Stage I infection, the infection is completely concealed inside the abdomen of the cicada. 
 

Some time before the death of the host, the rear segments of the abdomen fall off, revealing a white, chalky mass or "plug" of the fungus, which produces spores.
 

Because of this method of spreading of Stage I spores, cicadas infected with M. cicadina have been referred to as "flying salt shakers of death". Infected cicadas are infertile. 
 

Stage I infected cicadas are observed to spend more time walking around and dragging their abdomen, which may aid in spreading conidia that infect other cicadas.

This behavioral change is thought to be the result of a fungal extended phenotype, the physical afflictions of the infected cicadas, or the general phenology of cicada life cycles. Progression in male and female cicadas is similar, including the time elapsed before the abdominal segments fall off. 

 

Stage I infected males respond to mating calls of both males and females and attract healthy males through flicking their wings, a behavior only observed in healthy females.

This altered behavior aids in infection of healthy cicadas. Stage I infected males also tolerate mounting from courting males, suggesting that M. cicadina alters insect sexual behavior to increase infection rates.

The fruiting bodies of M. cicadina on Stage I infected adult cicadas, are observed to possess a substituted amphetamine alkaloid, cathinone.

Cicadas that come into contact with conidia from an infected adult cicada contract Stage II infection. During Stage II infection, the fungus produces a different kind of spore: resting spores that have thick, ornamented walls and are not directly infective to adult cicadas. 
 

Instead, the resting spores lie dormant in soil and will infect the next generation of cicadas during their next 13 or 17 year emergence from the soil. The fungus renders both males and females sterile, though the insect may remain alive and mobile while discharging spores.

Infected cicadas display some normal behavior such as sexual responsiveness, and even copulation between infected and healthy cicadas has been observed. As cicada males form large chorus centers during mating, the infection rate of males with the resting spore stage is typically higher than infected females at this stage.

Conidia that fill the abdomens of infected males at this stage also alter the pitch of their mating call, resulting in them sounding smaller than they actually are to females, which may also contribute to the prevalence of higher infection rates in males than in females.

Species of the genus Massospora are found in the same habitats as their host cicadas, which includes large temperate ranges in the Southern and Northern hemispheres.

The density of cicadas over one 17-year cicada emergence period was found in one study to have dropped by one half due to infections from the fungus, while the number of infected cicadas producing resting spores increased by 9-fold. This suggests the fungus can be utilized as a control agent in decreasing the significant damage cicadas impose on tree roots on which they lay their eggs. 
 

Studies of M. cicadina and its hosts can also provide insights into biological clocks and environmental signaling due to their long, synchronous life cycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massospora_cicadina

The cicadas are part of the soundtrack of summer. Their calls, especially if a large number of animals is gathered, can form an impressive concert.

They are part of the hemiptera, the order of aphids and bedbugs, but they do not have the bad reputation of these others, although they are not beneficial either.

The hemipterans have modified mouth parts forming a peak-shaped structure called rostrum, which is adapted to pierce barriers and suck liquids, sap in plants or blood in animals.

The hemiptera are hemimetabole insects, that is to say, with incomplete metamorphosis; after hatching from the egg, nymphs emerge, which are immature stages similar to adults but without gonads or wings.

After several molts, which originate up to five successive nymphal stages, they become imagos (adults), winged, with the reproductive apparatus complete and sexually mature, ready to mate and perpetuate their species.

The cicadas that sing are the males and the sound is produced by a stridulatory apparatus located at the beginning of the abdomen and consisting of chitinous membranes called tymbals and air sacs that act as sounding boards.

An authentic biological musical instrument. The females hear these sounds with auditory organs located in the thorax and respond to the call of the romeo that has the strongest sound and maintains it for a longer time, an indirect demonstration of good genes.

The cicadas are dispersed using their wings in search of a mate. The mating takes place generally during the warm months, although the time varies according to the species and the region. 
 

Several species mate in a same time what produces a peculiar sonorous phenomenon, a competition to impose its melody.

The males attract the females with the song and the females flapping their wings. Once fecundated, the female makes a V-shaped cut in the bark of the tree and puts about 600 eggs there.

Finally after two-six weeks of deafening songs, mating and egg laying, the cicadas die and the process, that wonderful process we call life, begins again.

After hatching from the egg, the new generation begins its feeding in the aerial part of the tree but the nymphs fall to the ground and penetrate the land, where they live buried from two to seventeen years, depending on the species.

There, buried, they feed on the sap of the tree, piercing the roots with their sucking mouthparts. At the end of that time, they emerge from the ground as if they were revived dead coming from the grave, climb the tree, suffer a final metamorphosis, become adults with wings and genitals developed ready for mating and feed on the sap of the plant, now again in the aerial parts. In 2016 billions of cycads emerged from the ground in the northeast of the United States.

This is the normal life of a cicada, much more laborious than suggested by the famous fable originally written by Aesop and recreated by Jean de La Fontaine and Félix María Samaniego. I did not like the fable when I read it as a child.

With the arrival of winter, the cicada asked the ant for help, but the ant recriminated her lazy summer and denied her the necessary food to survive.

The ant seemed vengeful, insensitive and cruel to me like those miserable sanctimonious people who rejoice when something bad happens to the happy and dissolute neighbor, and above they boast of morality and charity.

Cicada with fungal plug - There can also be masters and slaves here. The biological cycle of the cicada becomes complicated if it is infected. Massospora is a parasitic fungus that also awaits its moment. It is a zygomycete specialized in cicadas.

When a nymph digs in a soil where this fungus exists, the spores stick to its body. As the cicada matures, the massospora multiplies, devours the insect from within, castrates it and replaces its abdominal area with a whitish mass of spores, which is known as a fungal plug or pustule. And then, Massospora takes control 12.

Massospora is therefore part of that list of parasites that include viruses, bacteria, nematodes, protists, crustaceans and fungi that modulate the behavior of their hosts to increase their transmission and improve their dissemination.

The process seeks the active transmission of the host and is a behavior where the fungus maintains or accelerates a normal activity of the host at the same time that advances in sporulation, although the state of the insect is tremendously precarious.

The cicada is devastated, its soft tissues stuffed with hyphae of the fungus, its sexual organs destroyed and, despite all this, with its last throes of life, it launches into a wild sexuality. Infected cicadas become hyperactive and hypersexual.

The insect tries to mate with the same vigor although its sexual organs no longer exist, although it hardly has muscles or nervous system but in those last movements it passes to the mate part of the spores of massospora spreading the infection.

The more cicadas become infected, the greater the biological success of the fungus. In addition, in the intense movements of the copula, the spores of the fungus fall to the ground and thus the soil is seeded. The process is ready to start again when the nymphs of the new generation fall from the tree and begin to dig.

Massospora-infected cicadas with associated spore morphology - Most fungi that infect insects kill their host before producing the conidia that generate the spores that will give rise to new fungi. 

 

A few species keep their hosts alive while sporulating, which helps to disperse the spores. Massospora is one of them.

There are many amazing things in this process. How is the cicada able to continue functioning, to keep flying, to make sounds when two thirds of its body have been substituted by the hyphae of the fungus? Why does a single behavior prevail, the sexual one? How does the fungus control the insect?

Many mushrooms have a spore dispersal system that we call mushrooms. The fungus lives buried or on the surface of the soil but when it reaches favorable conditions, temperature, humidity, etc. the hyphae join in a reproductive body that rises from the ground.

The spores that will generate new fungi will fall from the lamellae or cavities of the mushroom. But Massospora uses another system, its system of spreading spores is not a mushroom but the cicada, which disperses and infects the fungus when it mates, as an authentic sexually transmitted disease.

But the cicada is on the verge of death, eaten by the fungus, crammed with spores, how does Massospora get the insect to ignore the damage in his body and continue devoting himself to mating?

Matthew Kasson, an American mycologist, and his group considered how the fungus could manipulate the behavior of the cicada and presented a hypothesis: through psychoactive substances.

We all know that some mushrooms are capable of generating drugs that have been consumed in rituals directed by shamans over millennia. Kasson and his group collected cicadas and analyzed the chemical composition of the spore packets.

The surprise was that they contained psilocybin and cathinone, two molecules that are included in schedule 1 of the Administration against drugs of the United States, the famous DEA. Schedule 1 drugs are most powerful, most addictive, without medical use and potentially most dangerous.

In fact, the researchers alerted the DEA, which authorized them to continue with their investigation. Production of the amphetamine cathinone and its proposed biosynthetic pathway in Massospora cicadina.

Massospora cicadina infects periodic cycads, which arise every 13 or 17 years, and causes them to contain cathinone. 
 

Massospora platypediae and Massospora levispora infect annual cycads, which emerge every year, and cause them to present psilocybin.

Cathinone is an amphetamine, and is found only in khat or qat, a plant that is consumed in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. 
 

The qat is a vegetable stimulant that is chewed and is the plant with the most potent psychostimulant properties known to date. 

This drug produces a stimulation of the Central Nervous System and generates a sensation of stimulation and euphoria at the psychic level. Psilocybin is the hallucinogen that is part of magical fungi. 

It is a prodrug alkaloid of a hallucinogenic compound: psilocin, responsible for the psychoactive effect of the drug. Mushrooms that possess psilocybin have been used as entheogenic substances, as a way to contact divinity.

The shaman consumed the mushroom as a way to transcend, to communicate with the gods, to guide the future of his people. Then, in the twentieth century they became part of the wide panoply of recreational drugs, consumed for sheer pleasure.

It is produced by around 200 species of fungi and also manufactured chemically since the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the synthesis route. This is the first time that psilocybin is found in the Animal kingdom. At first the group assumed that Massospora synthesized these drugs following the same metabolic pathways that follow the khat and magic mushrooms.

But a genomic analysis revealed that Massospora does not have the enzymes to make those synthetic processes. It is possible that the synthetic mechanism is a symbiotic association between the insect, the fungus and the microbiota of the digestive tract of the insect, and that this cooperation between such different species is responsible for this mini-laboratory of drugs.

And another question, could you use the infected cicadas to get a high yourself? The problem is that both drugs are two of the almost 100 chemical compounds detected in these cicadas. It is possible that some of them are toxic to humans. It certainly sounds too risky.

These molecules are used as recreational drugs for their properties to alter the mind, as stimulants but also have a medical use. They can be used to treat obesity because they decrease appetite.

Psilocybin has been studied as a drug for depression and anxiety in cancer patients while cathinone is added in anti-attention deficit hyperactivity medication because it improves concentration.

The cicadas that had been infected as nymphs had much higher amounts of the two narcotics than the less active cicadas that became infected in adults while copulating.

The males try to copulate with everything they find and in some cases they behave like females, beat their wings instead of singing with what they attract other males and, therefore, help to disperse the fungus.

The obsession with copulation, something that the drugs achieved, maximized the dispersion of the spores in those cicadas that became infected when they were nymphs. 
 

Is it possible that some microorganisms alter our behavior so that we are more promiscuous or less careful with protective measures?
 

It is possible that there are some microbes that are sexually transmitted 3. For that, it is important that the host does not appear ill and, in fact, many sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia or gonorrhea are frequently asymptomatic.

Sexuality, and even promiscuity, could be a system to achieve a greater microbiological variety, including beneficial species. There may even be some species of sexually transmitted microbes that encourage humans to have sex more often.

A very simple possibility is that sex is more pleasant and an easy way is a microbe that increases vaginal mucus. As simple as that. And what are the effects on the cicada of those doses of drugs? At the moment we can only speculate. 
 

It is possible that they make cicadas less desirable to predators, many alkaloids are used as repellents for several groups of animals.
 

It is also possible that they encourage a more active behavior, with less fear; It is possible that it slows down the damage caused by the fungus and causes the cicada, with a sensation of well-being chemically generated, to live a normal life in its last hours of life, including that desire for mating. With fungi or without fungi, these animals spend almost two decades underground to finish in a few weeks of pleasure.

https://mappingignorance.org/2019/07/15/sex-drugs-and-rock-roll-cicada-style/

Dust mite Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus. This mite is eight legged of which six legs are visible (at lower frame). The mite has an unsegmented, round body. 
 

It's mouthparts (at lower centre) are highly adapted to feeding on the dead scales of human skin found in household dust. Dust mites are relatives of spiders and scorpions.

Six of this Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus‘ eight legs are visible at bottom. Dust mites are relatives of spiders and scorpions but invisible to the naked eye. Millions live inside furniture and fabric in the average home.

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/98/76/7d/98767dd98a6441cde098f2eab35f4f85.jpg

The many cicada species all have one thing in common. Their lifespan above ground is much shorter than their underground lives. Depending on the species, a cicada might emerge as often as annually or as infrequently as every 17 years, but they expire approximately five to six weeks later.

 

Cicadas are commonly eaten by birds and sometimes by squirrels, as well as bats, wasps, mantises, spiders, and robber flies. 
 

In times of mass emergence of cicadas, various amphibians, fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds change their foraging habits so as to benefit from the glut.

 

Cicada tymbal - This image shows one of the tymbals just below the pointer. Male cicadas call from trees. Each individual male tries to call louder than the next in order to convince females to chose them for mating.

 
The sound is made with structures known as tymbals which are located on the sides of the first abdominal segment, near the top just behind where the hindwings attach. The above image shows one of the tymbals just below the pointer.

 

Large muscles contract, causing the tymbal surface to bend inwards which produces a vibrating click. These vibrating clicking noises are enhanced by a large air chamber that extends well into the abdomen.

 
Repeated contractions by thousands of cicadas can create a spectacular din. Females chose the male that interests them with a flick of their wings which stimulates the male to come closer.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nmnh/2607912292

 
Methuselah Insect - The life spans of most insects are shorter than a year. This is in part because they're cold-blooded and thus poorly equipped for winter. Some do live much longer, though, and my guess is that the periodic cicada holds the record.

They can live for a whopping seventeen years. And all but about two weeks of that time is spent in immaturity under ground. When they finally do rise from under the ground, their adult lives are over before they've hardly begun.

There's at least one species of long-horned beetle that beats out the cicada with its ability to survive in its larval form in dead wood for thirty-five to fifty years. 
 

But the insect with the longest life span, as far as we know, is the African mound-building termite queen.

 

These termites are known in part for the large mounds they build. They look something like haystacks, but more solid, like stone. 

 

Inside the mounds lives a highly sophisticated society of insects. Some termite queens live longer than sixty years.

 

Some scientists think they may live even longer than that. One thing's for sure, she's not lying around watching television all those long years. She's laying eggs constantly, up to something like thirty-five thousand a day.

https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/methuselah-insect.php

 
The notion of eating cicadas in the U.S., though, is more precious. "See that abhorrent little monster there on the ground? Well, sir, I find it marvelous, and I'm going to put it inside of me. I find beauty in all things." 

 
Just another boring, ordinary dinner party? Not anymore, because we'll be serving big screaming bugs. At least it's something to talk about.

 
Last week National Geographic pointed out that cicadas are gluten-free and low-carb. Which is true. Six years ago, the same magazine sold them as low-fat, which is also true.

They are also soon to be enormously abundant, and eating them will not likely kill you. The same things can be said of wood chips, though, and pebbles. In too much of the world, food is too scarce; but abundance alone does not endorse consumption.

 

One of the most common concerns I hear is that cicadas will molt in our stomachs. Well, I actually don't hear that, but I do think about it. The answer is of course, they won't. It's amid that sort of concern, though, that some see eating cicadas as a manifestation of human dominance over the pestilence.

 

Who said they could suck on our tree roots for all those years and then just decide to take over our nice suburban communities? If cicadas could eat us, they probably would, so we should eat them first. But that's only partly true.

 

According to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, "Periodical cicadas can hurt you only if they mistake you for a tree branch and try to feed, something that can happen only if you hold a cicada in your hand for a very long time (eventually this makes the cicada hot and thirsty)."

 
Some will mention that cicadas are arthropods, like shrimp and lobster. Eating them is just a step away. Just like how cats and cows are both mammals, so it's okay that you eat cats. Cats that have been living underground for 17 years.

 

And that really is the thing. I'm sure I've eaten things that have been underground for 17 years, but not knowingly, not happily. Cultural differences and social etiquette aside, are they safe to eat? How many chemicals do they absorb underground?

 

Entomologist Jenna Jadin, a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote a book of cicada recipes, so she's not impartial, but she says they're probably fine in small doses. Still the first page of her book reads:

 

"The University of Maryland and the [cicada interest group] Cicadamaniacs do not advocate eating cicadas without first consulting your doctor."  

That caveat seems extreme, but, their words, not mine. It may refer to the possibility of a shellfish allergy. If you have a shellfish allergy, cicadas may not be for you.

Meanwhile the site Cicada Mania warns that even dogs should be wary: "Pets can choke on the rigid wings and other hard body parts of the cicadas; pets will gorge themselves on cicadas, and possibly become ill and vomit; 

 

Pets who consume cicadas sprayed with copious amounts of pesticide can and will die." Take it all in context; an opportunity to re-evaluate everything. Here is what Americans eating Brood II cicadas looks like so far.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/before-eating-cicadas-pause/276096/

 
Periodical cicadas, sometimes referred to as 17-year cicadas, are large, flying insects that are known for the loud buzzing noise that males make to attract female mates. 

 

These insects are often incorrectly referred to as locusts, even though they are unrelated. While annual cicadas emerge every year, periodical cicadas appear at either 13- or 17-year intervals.

https://www.pestworld.org/pest-guide/occasional-invaders/periodical-cicadas/ 

 
Welcome to what has become Inadvertent Cicada Week in this column.  Obviously, I'm fascinated by them.  This started around the summer of 2003, when I was completely addicted to a certain farm-simulator game for the Nintendo SP.

 

During virtual summer on my virtual farm the game's music was overpowered by a jarring REEEREEEREEEREEEEEEE sound, intended to represent Japan’s singing cicadas.  

 

When I finally managed to turn my Gameboy off to get some good ol’ grad student day-sleep in the relative stillness of central Pennsylvania, I found that the REEEREEEEEEEE noise had followed me.

 
The real-life farms of the eastern United States have plenty of their own singing cicadas, and the noisy bugs had overrun my town. I’d imagine that cicadas are the signature sound of summer days in many other places, as well.  They’re LOUD. 

 

At over 90 decibels, cicadas can compete with motorcycles.  The almost-trademarked idling roar of a Harley comes from its V-twin engine, which has a displacement of over 700 cubic centimeters.

  
It’s hard to believe that an insect can make just as much noise with less than 3 cubic centimeters of sound equipment.  
 

Their secret is in the well-tuned anatomy.  The primary noisemakers of the cicada are two organs called the tymbals.

 

The word sounds similar to “tympani” and “cymbal” for good reason. It acts as a rigid plate that resonates, creating the cicada’s signature song. The tymbal is closely coupled to a series of ribs that are made of the hard chitinous cuticle that also forms the insect exoskeleton.

These ribs do something that ours, thankfully, can not.  During the cicada’s song, they buckle inwards with a quick snap, which delivers a pulse of energy to the tymbal like a hammer to a gong. 

   

The cicada is perfectly tuned so that the ribs buckle successively and in phase; each buckle causes a wave that matches the wave of the rib before it.

 

Thanks to the constructive effect of these pulses, the tymbal sustains a long, loud sound which is further amplified in air sacs and the cicada’s own eardrums before leaving the cicada. A precise balance of mass, stiffness, and elasticity is required to sustain this insect’s fortissimo.

 
Even slight changes to the mass of the tymbal and the succession of rib-strikes reduces the sound-producing power of the cicada, damping its mighty roar to the weak whimper of a cricket.

The cicada sings for the same reason as many a band's frontman: to meet ladies.  But there is no Janis Joplin at the cicada’s Woodstock.  The female cicada can’t vocalize.
 

Instead, she holds up her end of the banter by delicately flapping her wings, mesmerizing the males within close range.  Researchers also are big fans of the female’s wing flick, but for an entirely different reason-- it’s an easy sound to reproduce.

 

Though you can’t get the male cicada to shut up outdoors, he quickly gets stage fright when handled or removed from his outdoor habitat.

This makes his acoustically compelling song difficult to study. By mimicking the sound of a female cicada, researchers can wheedle a passionate serenade from the male even under the unromantic fluorescent lights of the laboratory.

https://www.science20.com/run_and_tumble/singing_cicadas_now_i_know_how_john_bonham%E2%80%99s_neighbors_felt

 
In recent years, images and videos taken with state-of-the-art microscopy techniques have shown that new neurons in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus go through a series of changes as they link up to existing networks in the brain.

 A neural stem cell divides to generate a new neuron (green). As the new neuron grows, it rotates from a horizontal to a vertical position and connects to an interneuron (yellow) in a space called the hilus that sits within the curve of the dentate gyrus. 
 

The young neuron also starts making connections with well-established dentate gyrus neurons (blue) as well as neurons in the hippocampus (red).

 Once connections are formed, mature neurons send signals into the new neuron, and the cell starts firing off more of its own signals. 

 

At around four weeks of age, the adult-born neuron gets hyperexcited, sending electrical signals much more often than its well-established neuronal neighbors do.  

As the new neuron connects with still more neurons, interneurons in the hilus start to send it signals to tamp down its activity. Researchers think neurogenesis helps the brain distinguish between two very similar objects or events, a phenomenon called pattern separation.

According to one hypothesis, new neurons’ excitability in response to novel objects diminishes the response of established neurons in the dentate gyrus to incoming stimuli, helping to create a separate circuit for the new, but similar, memory.

https://www.the-scientist.com/infographics/infographic-how-adult-born-neurons-integrate-into-the-brain--67469

 
How Long Do Cicadas Live? The length of a cicada’s life depends upon the cicada species. When considering the longevity of cicadas, annual cicadas in the genus Neotibicen, (dog day cicadas) live for about 2-5 years.

 Cicadas in the genus Magicicada (the periodical cicadas) if left undisturbed in their nymphal, below ground habitat will live about 13 or 17 years, depending on the species.

Periodical cicadas are the longest living insect that occurs in the region north of Mexico. The one thing that most species of cicadas living north of Mexico have in common is they spend far more of their life underground as nymphs than they do above ground as adults.

Periodical cicadas are about 1-1 ½ inches long, have reddish colored eyes, black bodies and complete a life cycle in either 13 or 17 years.

The dog day cicadas are fairly easy to recognize since they are about two inches long and their bodies are greenish to brownish in color with black markings. Some species of dog day cicada adults will show up every year.

https://www.orkin.com/other/cicadas/lifespan