‘They Like To Scream’: Dog-Day Cicadas Emerge In MD, Elsewhere

THURMONT, MD — For anyone missing the antics of the 17-year cicadas — you know, getting into a natural substance that’s similar to the potion in "magic" mushrooms and then doing their one job, having sex, until their bottoms fall off, and that sort of thing — here’s some fantastic news:

Cicadas that like to scream are emerging.

Technically, the cicadas coming out of the ground in Catoctin Mountain Park in northwest Fredrick County, Maryland, are annual cicadas. But they spend two or three years underground preparing for their dance in the sun.

They haven’t synchronized their emergence as elegantly as the 13- and 17-year cicadas to ensure a different brood comes out every year and their species survives, the strategy that has made the periodical cicadas evolutionary superstars.

These cicadas — scientifically Neotibicen canicularis — are commonly known as “dog-day cicadas” because they emerge in mid-summer during the dog days of summer, according to the National Park Service, which manages Catoctin Mountain Park.

If you thought those 17-year cicadas were big — the cicada President Joe Biden swatted had some girth to it — they’re undernourished in comparison to these up to 1⅝-inch-long screaming monsters. Their eyes are a normal color for an insect — they’re black, not red, like the periodical cicada eyes that so unnerved folks — and even though they “like to scream,” the park service notes, they’re harmless.

As with their slower developing cousins vulnerable to cicada-gobbling copperheads and other prey, every day during dog-day cicadas' brief time above ground is a fight for survival. Ohio State University says the insects are the exclusive prey of cicada killer wasps, whose life cycles are timed with the dog-day cicadas.

“The synchrony with annual cicadas makes sense if you consider that wasps would starve to death waiting 13 or 17 years for a periodical cicada meal,” according to the university’s Buckeye Yard & Garden onLine.

Dog-day cicadas have also been spotted in New Hampshire, Maryland and Ohio. And the U.S. Fish and Widlife Service says these bright green cicadas with see-through wings emerge that emerge from a brown exoskeleton are plentiful from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to Maine and South Carolina, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.

Let’s recap some of our summertime cicada fun — or however you choose to chracterize the Brood X invasion:

• For Copperheads, 17-Year Cicadas Are A Fast-Food Buffet
• Billions Of 17-Year Cicadas Are Good Eating, Some Say
• Cicadas Inside Plane Engine Delay White House Press Corps
• ‘It Got Me’: Late-Night Hosts Swat At Biden, Buzzed By Cicada
• Some 17-Year Cicadas Have Sex Until Their Genitals Fall Off