It's official: 2024 belongs to the cicadas.
This spring, two completely different cicada broods—one which lives on a 13-year cycle and the opposite that lives on a 17-year cycle—will emerge on the similar time from the bottom in a uncommon, synchronized occasion that has occurred the final time in 1803.
Billions of winged bugs will make an look within the Midwest and Southeast, starting in some locations in late April, for a Russian mating ritual that tends to encourage fascination and annoyance in equal measure.
This 12 months's double emergency is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Whereas every brood of 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds might emerge on the similar time, any particular pair sees their cycles align solely as soon as each 221 years. Moreover, this 12 months's teams of cicadas, often called Brood XIII and Brood XIX, occurred to make their houses adjoining to one another, with shut overlap in central Illinois.
“Thomas Jefferson was president the final time these two hatched, so is it uncommon? Sure,” mentioned Gene Kritsky, an entomologist at Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati and creator of “A Story of Two Broods,” a guide about this 12 months's double emergence that was printed earlier this month.
Learn the total story on NBCNews.com right here.
