Seventeen Year Cicadas

It has been twelve years since our local brood of seventeen year cicadas crawled up out of the ground and flew in dizzy rapture to the treetops.

For a few weeks the air was filled with a buzzing, bewildering mob of giant insects. Individually they were defenseless, but there were so many of them that the predators gorged themselves and left them alone.

Five years from now, their offspring will do it all over again. How does a bug count to seventeen? And why seventeen? Apparently, scientists don’t really know the answer. Link

Tomorrow: Art By Committee