cicada

Latin cicāda is probably onomatopoeic, imitating the insect's buzzing call, though the exact derivation is uncertain. The Greek equivalent was tettix, also onomatopoeic but imitating a different perception of the same sound. Cicadas produce their noise not by rubbing wings like crickets but by vibrating a pair of ribbed membranes called tymbals on the sides of their abdomen. The sound can reach 120 decibels — louder than a chainsaw. A single cicada is noisy. A swarm is deafening.

The ancient Greeks treated cicadas as symbols of immortality and poetic inspiration. In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates tells a story of men so enchanted by the Muses' singing that they forgot to eat and drink and died, becoming cicadas — creatures that sing without needing food. Anacreon called the cicada 'blessed' because it had 'a bloodless body and a song.' The Chinese carved jade cicada amulets and placed them in the mouths of the dead, believing the insect's emergence from the earth symbolized resurrection.

Periodical cicadas in North America — the genus Magicicada — emerge in synchronized broods on cycles of exactly thirteen or seventeen years. Both are prime numbers. Evolutionary biologists believe prime-number cycles reduce the chance of synchronizing with predator populations: a predator with a two-year, three-year, or four-year cycle would rarely coincide with a thirteen-year emergence. Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this in 1977. The mathematical elegance is real, though the evolutionary explanation remains a hypothesis.

Brood X, the largest periodical cicada brood, last emerged in 2021 across fifteen eastern U.S. states. Approximately a trillion insects appeared within weeks, mated, laid eggs, and died. The word cicada trended on social media. People who had never heard a cicada in person discovered that a trillion insects singing at 120 decibels is something you feel in your chest, not just hear.