Made for love: What are sex-mad cicadas and what is their purpose in life?

They emerge once every seventeen years in a sexy plague, driven to increase the cicada population as much as possible

Thu, 27 May, 2021 - 13:00

Elle Hunt

Brood X is upon us. Across the US billions, if not trillions of cicadas have emerged from below the ground, a biblical plague that occurs every 17 years. Gene Kritsky wouldn’t miss it. “This is special,” he says. An entomologist at Mount St Joseph University in Cincinnati, Kritsky has studied periodical cicadas for nearly 40 years. Brood X, the subject of three of his books, holds a particular place in his heart. In the middle of back-to-back interviews during his busiest professional period since 2004 (“It happens, every 17 years”), he found time to share his favourite facts with us.

Not all cicadas are equal