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The Buzz on Cicadas 2024
90 Plays1 year ago
In this buzzing episode of Hort Culture, we delve into the fascinating world of cicadas with Dr. Jonathan Larson, University of Kentucky Assistant Professor of Entomology. As Broods XIX and XIII make their rare simultaneous emergence in 2024, we explore the significance of this event, which hasn't occurred since 1803 and won't happen again until 2245. Dr. Larson enlightens us on the life cycle and ecological impact of these noisy insects, while also debunking common myths. It's an episode not to be missed, filled with intriguing facts and the unmistakable soundtrack of cicadas in the background. Tune in to learn why this cicada season is one for the history books!
Dr. Jonathan Larson, University of Kentucky Entomology
Periodical Cicadas in Kentucky
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture. Welcome.
Kentucky Weather and 100 Acre Woods
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello. I will tell you right up front, I'm feeling a bit like the weather today that in Kentucky, which is chaotic. So, uh, just unstable, unstable. It's pretty regular. If you're a poo bear, it's a little blustery out there.
00:00:32
Speaker
Look at that, that was precious. I was going dark with it, but that's pretty cool for me. I'm trying to bring it back to the 100 acre woods real quick. To the light, bring it back to the light. Oh, boss.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Jonathan Larson
00:00:41
Speaker
Well, we have plenty of light in sunshine today because we have the Dr. Jonathan Larson on with us today, who has been a guest of ours before and is in the entomology department here at the University of Kentucky and has his own podcast. So, you know, he's kind of great at this. So, hey, Jonathan, what's up?
00:01:01
Speaker
pump the brakes. I don't want that kind of expectations. You really raise the bar on the expectations, Jonathan. Thank you for having me, though. I appreciate it. This is fun. If I put it all on you, then I'm not expected to do as much. I understand. Really, that's the way this is going. Yes, that's the extension way. That's the motto. Transparency, transparency is key. Wow, called out on my own. When you're
Cicadas in Media and Public Interest
00:01:23
Speaker
an agent and you get
00:01:24
Speaker
You get in trouble, you blame it on the specialist and your specialist, you blame it on the agent, that's the circle of life right there. Sounds about right. But the growers never actually on the email chain, so they're like, I'm not sure who's in trouble here. Nobody's answering me. I wasn't even really that mad about this. I just wanted to know what the results were. It's not that big a deal.
00:01:44
Speaker
But anyway, so we are talking about bugs today because, you know, Jonathan entomology, it's kind of a whole thing, but some very specific ones that we are getting a lot of calls about right now, which is cicadas. And so.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's been, that's been an interesting ride. I don't know. I've emailed you at least once about like, people are freaking out. Do they need to freak out? What's the deal? Generally speaking, we probably don't ever really need to freak out, right? Like we could probably be pretty copacetic about most things. The periodical cicadas, it does, it does get presented as a plague. I've done a lot of media on this and it seems like about two minutes into every single one of them, they're like,
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, well, the cicada pocket lips and dr. Jonathan Larson with Jonathan Larson. I'm like, I don't endorse this. I don't. This is not how I would use. Yeah, that's not my my feeling. Is it not the tone we're going for? Okay. Yeah, check that out. If you ever want to go in a different direction, you could look into being a monster truck announcer.
00:02:56
Speaker
You mentioned you've been doing a lot of pressing just before we jump into the meat of the content. I mean, it's been a little far flung and I learned something when we were chatting earlier, but you've
00:03:05
Speaker
Where are all the places, just the ones that come to your mind that you've been talking about, Cicadas? I've done a lot of the Kentucky media, so just about every CBS and NBC station, several newspapers in the state. I've done several Ohio media places. I've done San Francisco radio shows about it. I did UK, not Kentucky, University of Kentucky, but UK, United Kingdom.
00:03:29
Speaker
with tea and crumpets and everything. It was a soccer show. And they were like, we'd love to talk to you about cicadas. And I was like, why? I really don't understand. I was genuinely concerned that they saw UK after my name. And they're like, oh yeah, a local. Funny accent. It's from Birmingham. So
Fascination with Cicadas
00:03:51
Speaker
I did that one. And then I've done a couple of NPR interviews and a CBS News interview. And I was on CNN.
00:04:14
Speaker
Chatting out there with the silk-voiced. I consider it the big leagues. Curious minds. I love your thoughts. It's been wild. Even one of them kind of asked me, they're like, how did you get involved in this? I was like, honestly, I have no idea. These agents. I talked about cicadas in 2021 when we had Brood X emerge, but I just did like maybe 10 or 12 different things there. And I don't know if it's just like the easiest thing to Google or if the real cicada experts aren't answering their phone.
00:04:22
Speaker
And now you make it to the big time.
00:04:43
Speaker
Like I've been getting all of these inquiries. I have a sneaking suspicion. It's because I'm willing to say like teenage bugs are having sex in your trees. And that's like, if they go with driving content, a little weird. And so I think sometimes they enjoy that.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah. You should just tell them that you emerge several months before the cicadas do every time. You guys kill me. You're going to have to catch me up on what happens is then. I claw my way from below ground where I've been feeding on tree sap for the last 17 years. Yes.
00:05:21
Speaker
Relatable. I shed my skin. It's like Monday morning. Multiple Mondays. For everybody who doesn't know, San Francisco and the United Kingdom do not have cicadas, is that correct? We're talking about periodical cicadas. That's the big news, the big emergence that's happening this year. These are a very specific set of species that only exist in Eastern North America. They're 13 or 17 year species.
00:05:51
Speaker
We have three 17 year species and four 13 year ones. And both of them are coming out this summer. They don't exist in the UK. They don't exist in California. It really is localized in the Eastern Continental United States.
00:06:06
Speaker
So is it, I guess they're just really interested in our books. It's, you know, it is weird. I often say this is a huge insect Mardi Gras. Like this is one of those things that David Attenborough should narrate. Like it's something that you can only experience every
Cicada Emergence and Behavior
00:06:22
Speaker
so often. It's something that only exists here. So, you know, think of all the unique natural phenomena of other continents. We're all fascinated with it.
00:06:30
Speaker
So I think that it's just, yeah, the fact that billions of insects are going to claw themselves free of the earth prisons that they've been in and they're going to take to the trees and scream for a few weeks and yeah. And they'll all die in this huge sort of macabre Mardi Gras. Uh, there's not really any other way to put it. See, I think Snoop Dogg needs to be narrating that one in particular. I could live with that for just a voiceover with David Attenborough as the original. I mean, I would take either.
00:06:59
Speaker
I would put them in a room together and let them do it as a duo. A collaboration. Somebody for 17, somebody for the 13. They can have like a battle. Yeah. I'm sure David Attenborough has a rap battle just in his back pocket. Oh, he does. He does. In a British accent, no less. Yeah. That's a one up. You can't trump that.
00:07:21
Speaker
So what's the day, I mean, what does that look like as far as with this unique situation where there's kind of multiple brutes going on or whatever, how's that different than like a normal year where it may only be one?
00:07:32
Speaker
So this year is being billed as the double brood emergence. Double broods aren't necessarily ultra rare. I would say that they happen every so often. I think the most recent one was in 2015, but they're usually pretty small. You'll see them like in New York state and down in Mississippi. It's not this huge convergence like we have this year. The geographic spread is what has captivated most people with this. So we have
00:07:58
Speaker
brood 19, which is the great southern brood, which is going to be emerging across most of the southeastern United States. And then we have brood 13, which is the northern Illinois brood coming out in Illinois.
00:08:11
Speaker
Southern Wisconsin, parts of Iowa, parts of Indiana, and maybe parts of Michigan. It's not quite clear if it's still there or not. And so that's just, you know, that's a big part of the country that's going to have bugs coming out. And
Public Misconceptions about Cicadas
00:08:24
Speaker
when it's billed, it's sort of like, Oh, you know, every city, every county, every yard, they're just going to come out and you know, there won't be anything left. But it's really localized here in Kentucky, for example, the last time brood 19 came out, we only had three counties that reported
00:08:41
Speaker
emergencies. That doesn't mean they don't exist outside of Allen, Caldwell and Trigg counties. Oh, I should throw Christian in there, four counties. They probably are in other counties. And in fact, I've already had some reports trickle in from Davies County and from McCracken where people have seen shells. So it's not everywhere. It's not in every yard. You usually need to have some long lived trees that are there that have been around for a while.
00:09:08
Speaker
Oaks are preferred. And also they like kind of river corridors areas. So there's a lot of those in Kentucky. So they do have their pick of the litter kind of, but it's not going to be all over the place. I can honestly say this year I have heard, I don't know what it is. If it's the tick tock generation, whichever brood that is.
00:09:26
Speaker
Uh, or why, but I have never heard, but that makes sense. What you're saying since we have Northern Southern, uh, going on. So just geography is involved in the fervor of just, uh, in the media churn that's going on right now with this. I've never heard so much about skaters as I have this year. Yeah. Brood X when it came out in 2021.
00:09:46
Speaker
We were coming out of a lot of lockdowns. Their people were getting vaccinated. And I remember doing media about people who they were upset. They were like, my whole summer is ruined because I was going to go see my friends now that I've been vaccinated. And now there's bugs everywhere. You're telling me that all these insects are coming out. There was a lot of media coverage then because it was pretty widespread. But yeah, this year it started in January. Like people started amping this up all over the place and
00:10:14
Speaker
I remember I got my first call and I was like, yeah, I'll talk about periodical cicadas. And then I started Googling and I was like, Oh, there's like a whole thing. You know, unlike what people believe, like I don't have this programmed into my Google calendar, like the cicadas. I've been telling people that you do though. I mean, you are. Yeah.
00:10:37
Speaker
So are people building bunkers or when they call you or what are they doing in preparation or maybe the proper question is what are you telling them to do in preparation.
00:10:47
Speaker
How deep should my bunker be? 30 feet. We were content. Even numbers. Just nice round numbers. Some Vault-Tec rations. I like it. A Fallout reference. I'm on board with that. Pip-boy. Yeah, you're Pip-boy. People have had a lot of questions that have revolved around, what is going to happen to my garden? What's going to happen to my trees? For the most part, we just try to talk people off the ledge.
00:11:15
Speaker
These are not what we would consider primary pests for the most part. I think part of this is
Impact of Cicadas on Gardens
00:11:21
Speaker
down to the fact that here in the United States, we have this weird entomology, etymology collision with cicadas where a lot of people refer to them as locusts. Locusts are biblical plague and locusts are not cicadas. Locusts are grasshoppers. They're super aggro grasshoppers who have been exposed to too many other grasshoppers.
00:11:44
Speaker
and they've rubbed up against each other too much. And so they go through this extra molt and they change color. And they pretty much are like, I have to eat everything and mate with everything. And we are going to destroy things. Like Florida fans when they come to town, they're very destructive. We used to have... I was going to say that sounds like people I know.
00:12:08
Speaker
Orlando, Florida. So even a better. So locusts are grasshoppers. They're not cicadas at all. But what we think happened was this weird situation where the colonizers that came from England, specifically from the UK,
00:12:27
Speaker
They only have one species of annual cicada on the Island there. And we think that some of the early ones may have actually like sort of landed in a cicada emergence. And the only sort of frame of reference that they had for this was biblical locust swarms. So from that's kind of rung down through the ages where people still call these locusts, but they don't behave like locusts. They're not interested in feeding very much. Uh, so they're not going to attack a garden crops. They're not going to bother corn or soybeans.
00:12:56
Speaker
these big agar seats that we have in the state, those things are not going to have any worries. They may climb up them and pull themselves out of their nymphal exoskeleton, but they don't bite them. We do have some issues that pop up with young trees. So if you've put a new oak tree, a new lilac, a few different plants in your landscape, they will land on those and occasionally lay their eggs in them. Fruit trees are also susceptible to this. So apple trees and others, they'll land on the smaller twigs.
00:13:25
Speaker
The female has this sword-shaped ovipositor. So it's this egg-laying device that she cuts a slit and the thinner bark twigs. And then she lays about two dozen eggs inside of this slit. They look like really thin grains of rice. I've snapped a few open. I watched a guy eat some of them once. So they were very sweet. And they are sold. Trigger's content. Pure raw. It was very dangerous. Oh, wow. Rocky style. Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
So when they do that, if you get enough females doing that, it will cause a kind of this overload and the stick will flag. So we'll start to fall out of the tree and turn Brown on a big tree. You can have thousands of these and it's fine. It'll just grow right through it. But on a new tree or a fruit tree, that's pretty problematic. So in those instances, we teach people about wrapping the tree. You get cicada netting, which can be expensive.
00:14:19
Speaker
Uh, and then we sort of wrap it around the tree, kind of like a lollipop. You engulf the entire canopy and then you go way down on the bottom of the trunk and wrap it and secure it to the tree. Uh, and then you leave it there until about the end of June. And it goes on
Cicada Lifecycle and Mating Calls
00:14:34
Speaker
when you first hear the male cicadas start to sing. And how many total weeks are we talking about here from emergence to the time that they go away? In terms of Kentucky, uh, it's already started. So I've gotten these reports from out West.
00:14:48
Speaker
Some extension agents, Kelly Jackson, shout out if he listens to your show. He was the first to report to me in Hopkinsville in Christian County that will never make sense to me. That he was seeing some and they were sort of
00:15:03
Speaker
staging themselves. He found them below some pavers and then he sent me some emergence videos. So it's already started and it started last week. So we'll probably see it end maybe the penultimate week of June. Maybe they'll keep going until the end of June, but usually it's just about a two month window that they're out and about.
00:15:25
Speaker
I was actually really looking forward to someone being able to join me for screaming outside. So I'm kind of sad that they're not really going to be super localized in central Kentucky. Can you not fill in for them? Can you not? I mean, I was already planning on doing it. I wanted to like acquire, right? Can I hear your cicada call?
00:15:44
Speaker
No, I will, I will kill everybody's ears. She needs a special microphone for that kind of impression contest. There's just like a lot of rage that I have to have. And usually that means I'm, it's the end of the day. You've been underground for a while, so I get it. I get it. I mean, you're trying to channel that many years of darkness.
00:16:03
Speaker
But you're framing it as like a scream, but for them it's more like a love song. Yes, that's true. Which, so like, if you're telling me cicadas are like metalheads. Kind of. Their love songs are like, you know. Rawr. Yeah. They're kind of mechanical and grimy. Death metal. It does get the metal. Yeah, like, yeah. It does feel nice. I mean, let's also talk, they're black in color with bright red eyes, pretty metal.
00:16:31
Speaker
Nice. It's giving metal. Sometimes they get infected with an STD fungus that causes their butt to fall off. Pretty much. Okay. That just took a turn, but let's go. Yeah. Everything I need. We're laughing my butt off, but you know, it's a different kind of laughing.
00:16:50
Speaker
screaming your butt off. It's this, it's the only thing that specializes on periodical cicadas. So one of the other things we get asked about a lot is why do they do this every 13 or 17 years? And the leading sort of theory is this has prevented any predator or parasitoid from explicitly only using periodical cicada as a food source or for their eggs. The cicada killer wasp doesn't use periodical cicadas. They only use annual cicadas.
00:17:18
Speaker
So there's nothing that, that uses them specifically except for this fungus. I don't know a ton about it. Apparently a lot of the research is being done in West Virginia, which I love.
00:17:28
Speaker
I'm hopeful to talk to them more about it sometime, but essentially it's this fungus that lives in the soil where they spend 13 or 17 years. So it's easy to see how they could contract it. It gets inside of their body and then it turns the inside of their abdomen white and chalky. And eventually it falls off and you'll see these kind of scattered throughout the landscape and the males, when they mate, they can pass it to the female who can then possibly accidentally get it on her eggs, sort of automatically infecting her future nymphs.
00:17:58
Speaker
more when they crawl down the tree, they can be exposed to spores or when they burrow down into the ground, they can get exposed to them. But it doesn't really get activated until they come out as adults. And then we see it wipe out some of them. It's the only thing of its kind.
00:18:12
Speaker
As
Understanding Cicada Emergence
00:18:13
Speaker
it crossed into humans, that was another question I got earlier, is if this is the setup to The Last of Us, but I don't think that's going to happen. My butt just fell off. Do you think this is cat-related? That's really a doctor. It's just because I've been eating cicadas. He's not that kind of doctor. It's a doctor, not butt doctor, sorry. Yeah. You got easily confused. Easily confused. Well, so could you, we kind of talked about it in different fits and starts, but
00:18:42
Speaker
Could you sort of verbally draw a diagram of kind of what happens as far as the steps in the process of emerges? I'm guessing, because I was thinking about the lane, the eggs. So the female has theoretically gone out, made it, then moved somewhere to lay her eggs. What's that kind of relative timeline and the places where all the action's happening?
00:19:07
Speaker
So what happens is they start to come out of the ground usually at night. It happens when the ground temperature, I think six inches deep or four inches deep is around 68 degrees, which happens to coincide usually with the local blooming of irises. So when irises are in full bloom, that's when most of the cicadas start to emerge. They kind of stage themselves. They'll be under logs and paver stones and
00:19:28
Speaker
rocks and all kinds of things in the landscape, they'll make a little chimney to kind of hide in until they come out. And they usually do it at night because they don't want to get eaten. It takes them some time to shed their last exoskeleton as a nymph and pull themselves out as an adult and they have to dry their wings. When they first come out, they're stark white with these kind of black eyebrows.
00:19:49
Speaker
They look like Groucho Marx and they have bright red eyes. There's a local myth in Kentucky and maybe a couple of other states that the Department of Entomology will pay you $20 per albino cicada and people will collect these newly molted ones and they'll try to bring them to us. Usually by the time they do, they've already melanized and hardened, so they're no longer white and they're very disappointed. Jokes on you. Yeah, exactly. Or we field calls and explain that that's just an urban legend.
00:20:18
Speaker
They do that. So that's usually happening at the end of April, the beginning of May, then the males that have done this, they take to the trees.
00:20:35
Speaker
And they will start flying up into the tops of large trees and they start singing. They sing individually at first. It's a call to the other males. They're like, yo, dudes, this is the best tree, man. Dudes rock. And the males will either listen and come over or they'll go to their own tree.
00:20:56
Speaker
Once they get all together, then they start to chorus. They synchronize their song and they amplify it. And this is when they get as loud as a jet engine and they're basically playing love songs. Like was said before, they're trying to attract females to the tree. And so when the females start to show up.
00:21:12
Speaker
they'll pair off and begin to sing a courtship song. And so this is, you know, a special song for her. I assume it's like Wonderwall or something of that effect. Just the favorite guitar guy songs. Yeah, exactly. Acoustic. She doesn't sing. So she's not able to make the same noises as the male. She only can click her wings and make this. It's not really audible to us as much as it is to them that says, you know, I accept.
00:21:38
Speaker
we can mate. And then when they make, he usually dies. That's all that he has the energy for. He finishes and then collapses dead. And then she will flip around and lay eggs in trees. And this will go for a couple of weeks with different females. They come out in stages. So we get some that come out in the first couple of weeks and then kind of another couple of weeks, another couple of weeks until we get to the end. And this is part of a strategy we call predator satiation.
00:22:06
Speaker
where the early ones, many of them get eaten by turkeys and squirrels and dogs and people and everything under the sun. And then everything gets sick of them and says, you know, I don't want to eat any more cicadas. And that means the ones that come out later on, they have a better chance of passing on their genes to the next generation. And then once the females are done laying their eggs over a few days, they also perish. You have these big piles of dead cicadas everywhere that return a lot of nutrients to the soil and fertilize the area or are scavenged.
00:22:35
Speaker
It's a huge protein surge. It actually impacts local fauna for a couple of years afterwards, where you'll see these surges in wild turkey populations and swirls. It's kind of like a mass year for acorns in some ways. I feel like they seem really smart. Okay. Tell me more about that. I mean, the whole idea of like,
00:22:59
Speaker
Number one, you know, there's this whole like 13, 17 year thing so that there's not, you know, predators really focused on them. Interesting. What is the way they have, you know, 14 years, right? Well, how'd they get to this point? And then not only do they do that, but then they stage their exit. So that like the first ones, you know, thanks for your service. Goodbye.
00:23:22
Speaker
The red shirts on Star Trek. Maybe it's just that I don't know a lot. I mean, I'm a plant person, so I don't know a ton about, I know seeds can kind of do this and they last for years in the soil and they can emerge when time and timing is right. But that seems such more of like a physical thing where what you're talking about to me in my brain is like smart and I, it freaks me out and how does that biological clock work? Is it just a maturity? Okay.
00:23:50
Speaker
So I can try to address all that. Like when people like me talk about this stuff, I want to get people amped about it. So I do sometimes lend some, I guess directionality to what they're doing and it's not intentional, right? Like they don't know what they're doing. They just are genetically programmed essentially to emerge at a set time and in a certain way, essentially. So some of the ones that come out early clearly survive because genetically that's still present.
00:24:18
Speaker
otherwise they would all get eaten out and disappear and die. As for the 13 or 17 year thing, the way that they know the time has passed is that they're down below ground feeding on tree roots as nymphs and they can essentially log the passage of time through the movement of sap below ground and above ground. So in the winter months when their food source ebbs, this just sort of
00:24:43
Speaker
It's a log. It's not like they scratch it into the wall. It's more of a, after a certain number of times of experiencing this, their body is primed to say, okay, now go up. Like we got to go up. And then they get obsessed. It's what taxokinesis, right? Or something to that effect where they want to get as high up as they can.
00:25:03
Speaker
and pull themselves out of that last exoskeleton. It's just a cue that then sets into motion a machine in their body that sends them up to become adults. They do miscount. That was alluded to before, like, why not 14? We believe that the prime numbers are the way that they are because it cuts down on the double broods. This only happens every couple hundred years like this. So they're not all together. It's just
00:25:30
Speaker
going to help with that and it helps with the predator specialization that I mentioned before. They do sometimes come out a year early and sometimes they can come out a year to four years late. So we sometimes have 13 year cicadas that accidentally become 17 year cicadas. I know that here in Fayette County, I had early risers from brood X in 2020. I had a few come out in my yard and then I had stragglers that came out the next year.
00:25:57
Speaker
I sent all that data to Cicada Mania, to Cicada Safari, I should say. Cicada Mania is a band, totally. Cicada Mania is a website that's been around since the early internet. They're very famous for all of the data they've collected on periodical cicadas.
00:26:13
Speaker
They don't have the app though. Cicada Safari is from a different group, I believe. But you can send in pictures and geotags. It's like iNaturalist, except a little more specialized. So you can help to perform some citizen science and help us know where cicadas are. This is all important. This year in Kentucky,
00:26:32
Speaker
because I said we have brood 19 coming out in Western Kentucky, the purchase, penny rile kind of areas. We're supposed to have brood 14 next year, which is a 17 year brood. I apologize for all the numerals that I keep throwing out, but they are going to emerge next year across a lot of Kentucky, everywhere west or east essentially of the penny rile region. A lot of counties are expected to have emergencies.
00:27:00
Speaker
They could come out this year. They could come out a year early, make a mistake and show up. And I'm worried about people sort of conflating them with the 13 year cicadas that are coming out out West. We can't tell the difference. We can't identify between them if they're 13 or 17 year
Marketing and Culinary Aspects of Cicadas
00:27:15
Speaker
by looking at their tummies, there'll be different colors of orange and black down there. We can also listen to their song. But that's something that I've been intrigued by this fact that we're going to have this huge emergence next year in Kentucky.
00:27:28
Speaker
And it could sort of start to happen this year and people might be confused. And that's one of the things that's been hard to communicate when we have Eastern agents asking about this because, you know, in Bourbon County, they may say, well, I heard about all these cicadas.
00:27:42
Speaker
And I said, Oh, it's not going to happen there, but then I have to throw this caveat in of like, well, I mean, sort of maybe like a few. Yeah. You could have the ones that are bad at math that come out this year. A few. Yeah. I always see like a random few. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, but next year is that's, that's the one that here in central Kentucky, look, my folks should worry about.
00:28:03
Speaker
or think about and be aware of. Yes, absolutely. That's the one that's going to... I'm thinking about pushing really hard over the next year. So some of them have, some of the broods have common names. So you don't have to say brood, X-I-I-I or whatever. So like we have the great Southern brood, the great Eastern brood, the Northern Illinois brood. I really want to call brood 14, the Kentucky brood or the bluegrass brood or the bourbon brood or something.
00:28:28
Speaker
because it is kind of centralized in our state. I would really like to have it sort of be Kentucky-centric. And maybe I'll work with like the Kentucky tourism board or something. We can figure out how to get people- Kentucky Proud. Yeah, exactly. Put a sticker right on the screen. No, it's brood, Alexis. Oh, Proud. Oh, like the marketing campaign. Yeah. You know that thing. It's kind of cool around here. Yeah, that could be cool. I mean, yeah.
00:28:57
Speaker
You got contacts at CNN, so I mean, it's time to go wide with this thing. Dear CNN. Dear CNN, we would like to market our brood. I was the guy with the housefly tie on.
00:29:13
Speaker
They not just remember that. Do you save that one for special occasions? I do like to teach in that one. It's very bold. It's silver with black flies, huge flies on it. I have a big insect tie collection. I ask for them for every Christmas.
00:29:28
Speaker
I love that. I, the only professor I remember, uh, having that had interesting ties was actually a soil scientist. And so you would think, you know, it would be something to relate that. And it was like manatees or something, like dolphins. Josh and I had that class together. Sounds like a coin move. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was, it was strange, but opposite of soil, frankly.
00:29:51
Speaker
Like how far away from this can I possibly be? So since we will be dealing with this next year, have you heard anything interesting about like these mounds of dead bugs that we're gonna do? Like what are people doing with them? Like, is it like jumping in and I'm like, please? Like how many can I eat in one city? I will tackle both of these questions separately. If they're dead on the ground, I would not encourage eating them necessarily. I mean, you could give it a go, but would you discourage me?
00:30:22
Speaker
Like don't eat that. There are some, some cicada best practices training so we can do. We actually, you joke, but we have written that, uh, that is out there. Uh, so when you have big piles of dead ones, usually you can just kind of leave them to just like piles of leaves, unless they're on top of something that you're worried about, like turf that needs to live and thrive and survive. You can kind of leave them there and they'll powderize and be a nutrients for the soil. They'll just become fertilizer essentially. And.
00:30:51
Speaker
And other things will go through and eat them and decompose them so you don't have to worry about them as much. But you can sometimes end up scooping them up with snow shovels. I have seen that done before, especially when they're on paths, because we haven't created slip and fall scenarios where the buck guts are kind of so thick.
00:31:08
Speaker
people will slip and fly around. That is metal. Slip on my DK body. The eating part, we do get some questions about that. Periodical cicadas have long been a food stuff for humans, in addition to other animals. There are native recipes going back hundreds of years about how to cook them. They were collected and eaten by many of the indigenous people of this continent.
00:31:38
Speaker
Uh, nowadays they are used in cooking. Whenever this occurs, they become like this sort of fun summer sort of weird thing to do. Some people have tried to do beers with them, bake with them. Um, I've eaten them a few different ways. When brood X came out, I had this really strange opportunity. Some of you have probably heard me talk about it before where this TV show came to the state and that was called wild fed. And the guy's whole shtick is that he goes places.
00:32:06
Speaker
And he like catches things and forages things and then they cook them and eat them. And he came sort of towards the tail end of the cicada emergence. I just got this random email that was like, Hey, I need somebody to take me to the woods or to a park or something and catch all these cicadas with me.
00:32:24
Speaker
I was wondering if you would, I was like, yeah, sure, strange man, that I've never met before. I'll go to the woods with you. I'll go to a secondary location with you. What's more better than that, John? Do you want to pick me up at my house? Yeah, give me metal. Do you want my schedule and a list of fears? You're such an eye, John. Here's my DMs. Jump out of here. Yes, true crime junkies are listening to this, like this is just a series of errors on this guy's butt. Yeah. So I met him in public at a park, Alexis.
00:32:49
Speaker
There were other people around. I sent my location to somebody else beforehand. I told people where I was going and I really just, I showed up and then there were these like camera people and they followed us around. This guy's name is Daniel Vitalis. I don't know if the show is still on actually, but he was, he was very metal. He had full sleeve tattoos.
00:33:07
Speaker
really kind of cool dude sold supplements and stuff. Just an interesting dude. And yeah, we like wandered around and caught hundreds of cicadas. I thought that was it. And then at the end, he was like, Hey, do you want to come to the meal? A tertiary location with you. I really thought this was just like, we were going to start a fire at the park and like shish kebab them and cook them and eat them. But he was like, here, here's the invite. Here's the location. And I drive out and
00:33:36
Speaker
It was the Brown Foreman family farm. Uh, the people that own Woodford reserve and their personal chef had somehow gotten involved and had prepared the cicadas. And so luckily I had, uh, uh, emergency bug tie in my car and I got dressed and went in as you should, as I should. And we sat down and we drank bourbon and ate cicadas that had been prepared with tuna and rice. Uh, there was a few other ones that were kind of more locally sourced. The big one was, uh, they had taken all these mulberries.
00:34:06
Speaker
and they had candied the cicadas and put them on top of homemade Kentucky ice cream. It sounds like a lot of concealment to me, the concealment of the cicadas. We've caramelized them, poured sugar on them. We deep fried them and put some ranch on it and they were delightful. I have had cicadas more plain than that. They're very nutty. They're like a lot of things that feed on trees. They kind of have that tree flavor to them.
00:34:31
Speaker
We don't recommend eating them raw because it is just like shellfish in a way. There could be some area there. We don't recommend if you have a shellfish allergy or a cockroach allergy that you eat cicadas. I just want to know if you have a cockroach allergy. I'm just, well, I guess you eat one and you start like swelling. If you get around household dust and you have cockroaches, usually this is more of an urban or suburban problem.
00:34:58
Speaker
Uh, those people end up knowing that they have cockroach. Yeah. Uh, and then shellfish that's yes, through oral exposure, through eating it. Uh, there's a lot of cross allergy kind of talk there. And so if you eat cicadas, it's very likely that you will react to them. If you have either of those allergies, uh, wash them and prepare them. You shouldn't eat like cicadas for three meals every day for a couple of weeks because they have been below ground for 17 years or 13 years.
00:35:25
Speaker
They do accumulate things that are in the soil and that can include heavy metals in certain areas. Metal. Metal again. Metal or metal? It's safe for pets to eat them. Dogs will scoop them up. Cats will play with them and eat them. That's all very safe. Just as long as they're not literally eating nothing but cicadas for two months, they will be fine. I straight up had this vision of you as the...
00:35:50
Speaker
on the Lion King when Timon is grabbing these insects and like munching on them and talking and flinging this beetle around. That was you. That was you. I appreciate that. It's a compliment. Timon, not Pumbaa, I think. I think I remember that. No, I just kind of imagined you talking about them while you're flinging one around and you just get the bite out of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an interesting field. People are turning crickets into powder and making mealworms into various things.
00:36:20
Speaker
Is he making suckers out of these? I want to, I kind of want a cicada sucker now. I'm not saying a cicada sucker. I've seen crickets. Yeah. Uh, I don't know. Maybe they don't make go through the candy process. What I want to know is why FCS isn't do like on this with recipes, because I feel like they're really like canned cicada. I can make some guesses. I could just hazard some guesses here. Oh, they're all trash. I helped. Uh, I helped a FCS specialist, uh, Heather Norman Bergdorf.
00:36:49
Speaker
She asked me to help her write some guidelines to cicada preparation. So they are putting some info out. Good for them. And in Trigg County, the ag agent and the FCS agent there are teaming up and they're having, I think, a cicada cooking workshop. And the ag agent is being asked to harvest them. So there are some folks that are out there that are giving a shot. And I've prompted some of the FCS people that next year I would really like to put out like a cookbook or a cook.
00:37:18
Speaker
infographic. I don't know how to phrase it with some different recipes and try to promote some consumption. For the bourbon brood or the bluegrass brood or whatever. You haven't answered the question yet. Would you eat them again after your encounter with the candied cicadas? Yeah, absolutely. I would eat cicadas again. There's only one insect I've ever eaten that I wouldn't eat again and it was live mealworms. I was
00:37:42
Speaker
at the Purdue Bug Bowl. And there was this guy, he would bring his insect collection every year. And I was a president of our entomology undergraduate club. No pressure. He walked by and I jokingly, we sell crickets in that organization to fund the club every year. We sell chocolate covered crickets. And I was like, oh, you don't want to eat one of our crickets, eh? And he got a wry look on his face and he went and got a ketchup cup full of live mealworms and he shot it.
00:38:11
Speaker
in front of me and so I had to do it too. And I was called out, so I did it. It seems like a skip from Indiana Jones or something. I mean, that's straight out of, yeah. You would have, what was the, what was the name of that show? Fear Factor, you would have won. Yeah. I believe it. I see, but it's not even like I'm brave. It's just like, Oh, uh, it was a double dog bear. So I was obligated through
Cicadas in Culture and Comparison
00:38:35
Speaker
the ancient ritual edicts. Yeah. Sure.
00:38:39
Speaker
Not good. I had no idea that this conversation was going in this direction, but I'm all about it. I am all about it. It was so interesting. I had no idea there were so many culinary veins that we could go down with cicadas. Fascinating. One thing I wanted to maybe ask you toward the end here, you're talking about how originally it was, why is everyone so crazy and obsessed with this? I really like the way that you talked about it as
00:39:05
Speaker
It's this cyclical, strange thing that's outside of our control. It's this natural phenomenon, much like the eclipse that happened a little while ago. Everybody was going buck wild over the eclipse in a way that I was not expecting for some reason. Are there other insect events like this locally or global? I'm sure there are, but ones that come to mind or that you're aware of that typically kind of
00:39:32
Speaker
capture the imagination. It doesn't have to be the 13, 17 year spacing or anything like that. But just things that if you're, if you're a aspiring bug head, trying to look for more things after this is over. I think the only thing that really compares here in the US is the monarch migration. That sends people also into really Gaga fits where they really want to see them coming through the area.
00:39:58
Speaker
It's not as spectacular as it once was. We have seen declines in the migratory populations with some effects down in Mexico where they overwinter. But I would say that's the one to me in the United States that similarly sort of sends people into shivers and they just, they love looking at them as they hang out in Mexico or they love watching them fly through in the migratory pathways.
00:40:22
Speaker
Then you'd go to like another tier where, I don't know if you've been down to Tennessee, but they have a huge firefly tourism industry there. They take you out into kind of semi-wild areas where the fireflies are really thick and they have these synchronized emergencies where the males come out and start to call the females down in the grass. And it's really, really spectacular. They sent out some time lapse videos and things.
00:40:45
Speaker
And there's just the habitat down there and kind of this little bit warmer nature of Tennessee means that they have these huge firefly groups that just come out. I almost said brutes. They have these big firefly flights that come out and people pay and go and do a lot of firefly tourism there. Beyond that here,
00:41:06
Speaker
I'd really have to start plumbing and thinking about it. Globally, I mean, you can go and watch the dung beetles of Egypt that move their dung ball across the desert in ways that the pharaohs once pondered. You can go and see the termite mounds of Africa, where you have the only insect that lives longer than these ones that we've been talking about, the termite queens there, they can live to be 20, 25 years old. And they have these huge chimneys that they live in.
00:41:33
Speaker
But they're not events. They're not synchronized or as extraordinary, I think, as what we see with the periodical cicadas. No big deal. That's why we need to get Kentucky brewed. That's right. America. And just the cicadas, if you drink 12 cicada beers, you too will scream. I can see a whole marketing thing coming together here.
00:41:57
Speaker
I mean, we can make this work, people. Let's make it work for us. How do we get the orchards involved in this so that the cicadas work for them and not against them? Cicada cider. Cicada cider. Part of me wants to do the bourbon brood because then I want to work with one of the distilleries to put it in the barrel. Oh. Yeah. 17 years from now.
00:42:21
Speaker
That's like a trade secret. That's like an angle, Jonathan. We may not want to give that up. Yeah, that's good. I like it.
00:42:36
Speaker
Well, we do have that whole distilling thing at UK now that you can get a degree in distilling or something like that. Wild times. The James Beaman Institute.
00:42:46
Speaker
We can't put the UK logo on pocket knives, that's dangerous. But on a liquor bottle, yes, absolutely. Have you approached this institute? I'm sorry, that was a little political. We have been talking about cicadas after all. People stopped listening a while ago.
00:43:09
Speaker
No, this is all really good information and hopefully we'll relieve some people of, you know, not panicking. And they're biblical fears, biblical fears. That's, you know, a thing. And, uh, also new, uh, recipes, honey, what's for dinner. So, I mean,
Promotion and Podcast Wrap-up
00:43:26
Speaker
you know, cicada sandwiches, but also don't get heavy metal poisoning from cicadas. Cause that's going to be fun to explain to the doctor. Listen to it on volume 10 and you will not get heavy metal poisoning.
00:43:38
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I guess that sums it up. Jonathan, what is the name of your podcast? Hey, people want to search out more of your. Awesome attitude. We are our throw pod, our throw dash pod, uh, on all of your favorite podcatcher apps. Uh, it's an allusion to our thoughts. Uh, I have with my co-host Jody green of the university of Nebraska and Michael Scavarla of Penn state. Uh, you can find us on pretty much every podcatcher app and Spotify.
00:44:06
Speaker
Uh, we are currently going through some malaria episodes. So in May, we're going to do malaria, very serious topic, but we're talking about the history of malaria and the eradication program that was successful here in the United States. Uh, we've had some cicada content recently. So yeah, if people wanted to check us out, that'd be awesome. I really like special, special episode from malaria, quiet ninth.
00:44:31
Speaker
Uh, we talked about, you know, like, why aren't we drinking G's and T's when we shoot this is all right. Cause it's professional in the Dean's list. I really like your podcast because you do talk more. It's not just about like, this is a bug and it is, this is how it like, it's a little bit more of like the history of it and just.
00:44:53
Speaker
Some of these things that have really shaped a lot of, you know, society over time and the Alpha Gal episode particularly comes to mind and fascinating to me as someone who is suffering with that. Oh, no, I didn't know that. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yay. Not as bad. I learned that I actually have it really chill compared to a lot of people. So I'm, I'm not going to complain anymore, but I always thought of you as an alpha gal, but I didn't. I am indeed have alpha gal rather than be an alpha gal. I, that should be like a, some shirt. I need a, I need a shirt.
00:45:32
Speaker
We're all about, this is a marketing podcast after all today. I'm not sure what the name of this, this episode is going to be. It's going to be something like cicadas, the new metal head, or it's going to be cicadas TM. I don't, I don't know, but TMI. So, uh, it's okay to brood, but B R E W E D. Ooh. Coffee shots. Man, this is just go riding this down.
00:46:00
Speaker
Anyways, be quiet. I'm going to end this because people are ready to get off of here and we thank you for being here with us today. Thank you, Dr. Larson, for being with us. It's always fun to have you on. If you all have any questions for Dr. Larson, we're going to put his email in the show notes and you can also find our email in the show notes if you're too scared to talk to somebody who is as famous as Dr. Larson is these days.
00:46:26
Speaker
You can always shoot us an email and we'll forward it on, but we promise he's easy to talk to. We'll include that if you have any questions about insects, if you have plants, if you have info, if you want to hear more about fireflies because I'm writing that down as something that would be really, to me, a cool topic or as I like to call them, lightning bugs because Kentucky. Could be an eliminating topic. Yeah. Pop versus soda, I feel like is lightning bugs versus firefly here.
00:46:53
Speaker
But anyways, if you want to hear more about that, leave us a comment, send us a message. You can also follow us on Instagram at Hort Culture Podcast. We would love to hear from you. Otherwise, you're just getting what these minds make up in here. So you're welcome. But we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and that you will join us next time. Thanks, y'all.
00:47:30
Speaker
you