Emerging cicadas are so loud in one South Carolina county that residents are calling the sheriff’s office asking why they can hear a “noise in the air that sounds like a siren, or a whine, or a roar.”
The Newberry County Sheriff’s Office sent out a message on Facebook on Tuesday letting people know that the whining sound is just the male cicadas singing to attract mates after more than a decade of being dormant.
Some people have even flagged down deputies to ask what the noise is all about, Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster said.
The nosiest cicadas were moving around the county of about 38,000 people, about 40 miles northwest of Columbia, prompting calls from different locations as Tuesday wore on, Foster said.
Their collective songs can be as loud as jet engines and scientists who study them often wear earmuffs to protect their hearing.
After Tuesday, Foster understands why.
“Although to some, the noise is annoying, they pose no danger to humans or pets,” Foster wrote in his statement to county residents. “Unfortunately, it is the sounds of nature.”
… do cicadas have noses?
For some definitions of noses.
Do they have a weird bump over their mouth in the center of their face? Some do yes.
Do they inhale or exhale with it? No.
Has it got anything to do with their sense of smell? Also no.
What do they use it for? Well functionally it’s more of an upper lip than a nose.
How do they smell? Awful. But also they use the chemorezeptors in their antennae to smell/taste the air.
I’d like to subscribe to Cicada Facts.
Did you know
Cicadas can sexually transmit a fungus that will infect the new host, pump it chock full of amphetamins and lets it run on a no-sleep-all-action hypersexual rampage where the fungus completely replaces the sexual organs of the cicada so when it has sex with another one that other will become infected and do the same?
Pfff, that just the script to the last of us part 3.
Who wants to know?