Trillions of ‘Brood X’ Cicadas Are About to Emerge Across the U.S. to Sing, Mate and Die. Here’s What to Expect
April 14, 2021 at 07:12PM This coming May, millions of people around the United States will have front-row seats to an extraordinary entomological event: Trillions of Brood X cicadas across 15 states will emerge almost synchronously after having spent the last 17 years underground. The males will take up elevated positions, each buzzing as loud as a lawnmower to attract females. After mating, the adult cicadas will die off en masse just about as quickly as they arrived—likely sometime in late June or July—while their offspring tunnel underground, not to emerge until 2038, when the dance will begin anew. Annual, or “dog day,” cicadas appear across the U.S. every summer, when their signature mating song becomes as much of the seasonal soundscape as a passing ice cream truck. But the cicadas taking center stage in this year’s event—distinctive for their black bodies and red eyes—are part of a periodical “brood” of the insects that emerge in predictable cycles of 13 or 17 years....