In the meantime, cicada lovers and experts like Lill and Weiss are trying to broaden interest from the general public, starting with children. Though the insects may look scary and have a bad rap as invaders, they have been around — mostly underground — for millions of years.

“We want more than coexistence,” Weiss said. “We want appreciation, admiration for the cicadas. They don’t hurt you. They can’t bite you. They can’t sting you. They’re not poisonous, and they are just making use of the space that they’ve been living in. … We’d like people to feel lucky to live in a place where periodical cicadas come up because this is such a cool and rare life history.”

Long development time

Not only are periodical cicadas harmless — they are also vulnerable as prey. Experts believe they have evolved to emerge at the same time and overwhelm possible predators with their sheer numbers, thus ensuring their survival.

“They hardly have any behavioral traits that protect them from being eaten,” Lill said. “So they’re pretty defenseless, and they’re quite nutritious and pretty much sitting ducks for anything that wants to eat them, including us, if you’re so inclined.”

These insects spend most of their lives — over 90% — hidden underground. Each cicada has a small mouthpart shaped like a needle, which it inserts into the root of a tree to drink and feed from its sap for over a decade.

“But they’re there the whole time,” Weiss said. “And every single cicada is down there by itself, in a little mud cell with its little beak stuck into a root.”

While cicadas might be spotted above ground every summer, some are annual cicadas, which hunker down in the soil for only about two years. Because their population is not synchronized, some mature annual cicadas will emerge every year.

Periodical cicadas have a different emergence cycle and one of the longest development times of all insects, according to Lill. They grow underground until they are ready to come out to mate and breed. Sometimes, a few individuals known as stragglers may emerge a few years before if they reach maturity early.

As they prepare to emerge, cicadas begin making tunnels toward the surface. To the human eye, small holes about the diameter of a nickel will start appearing near trees under which cicadas have lived. Sometimes these holes will have a little turret, like miniature sandcastles.

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