Share and Follow
BILLIONS of sex-crazed insects will fly across the country this summer after lying dormant for 17 years.
The eerie insects are now plagued with a zombie-esque fungus similar to that in The Last of Us, a popular video game turned hit TV show.
This summer, the Brood XIV class cicadas will begin feeding on tree sap across the United States.
The cicadas have lain dormant for nearly two decades.
During their four- to six-week life span above ground, they are expected to search for mates and reproduce, USA Today reported.
“Nature is stranger than any science fiction that’s ever been written,” John Cooley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut, told the Scientific American while describing the phenomenon.
The red-eyed cicadas will begin rising from the ground after the temperature averages over 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It takes about two full weeks for the great bulk of the cicadas to come out,” Gene Kritsky, a professor at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, told USA Today.
“Once they start coming out at a specific location, that starts the clock.
“You’ll have cicadas at that location for the next six weeks.”
After mating, the female insect will deposit eggs so the cycle can repeat in 2042.
The insects, who buzz so loudly that police have been called on them, are already beginning their ascent.
Cicadas have already been reported in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Georgia, and Maryland.
The loud buzz is actually a mating song sung by the male cicadas to attract the females.
This year, the buzzes will be even louder as the 17-year cicadas have been plagued by a fungus called Massospora cicadina.
Massospora increases the insects’ sex drive and turns them into “zombies,” according to the New York Post.
The genital-destroying disease causes the spores to replace the cicadas’ genitalia with fungus.
Once the insect is infected, it flaps its wings like a female cicada, luring healthy males to mate with it.
Where will the cicadas be seen this summer
- Georgia
- Kentucky
- Indiana
- Massachusetts
- North Carolina
- New Jersey
- New York
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Tennessee
- Virginia
- West Virginia
After the males try to mate with the infected insect, they will also become infected and spread the fungus.
“By doing so, they can infect males and females alike … and they are tricked into doing so as much as they can for as long as they can before they ultimately succumb to the fungus and die,” Smithsonian entomologist and collections manager Floyd Shockley told the Washington Times.
“It’s sex, drugs and zombies,” Cooley said.
Luckily, humans have nothing to fear from cicadas.
While their buzz may be annoying, they won’t bite or sting anyone.
