Talk about the hapless seventeen-year cicada at the end of summer

The sound of cicadas in summer comes from male cicadas, while female cicadas do not have a speaker. In order to attract females to mate with themselves, male cicadas use up their strength to eat tree roots and bark. After all, compared with the long dormant periods in the past, the days in the sun are so short!

So the cicada is a little noisy, it seems. Can you stand it? Original image: Pixabay

Wait 17 years, wait for what?

Cicada larvae live in the soil and live on the roots of plants. Most cicadas stay in the soil for a few years, while the United States has "17-year-old cicadas" and "13-year-old cicadas". As the name implies, these cicadas remain dormant in the soil for 17 or 13 years. If you only stay in one place in the United States for the rest of your life, you may only see it once every decade.

In an episode of the American TV series the Power of Evil, a small town in Colorado disappears inexplicably every 27 years, only to find out that it is a cicada ghost. In reality, 17-year-old cicadas and 13-year-old cicadas are victims who should have enjoyed singing and sex in a short few weeks, but they may not even be able to protect their buttocks. It can be said to be very unlucky!

Got a fungal infection, lost his ass. Picture: MATT KASSON / The Atlantic

When going out for waves, some cicadas will be infected with a fungus called Cladosporium, so the tragic fate will be staged. The fungus enters the cicada's body and eats the organs in the cicada. A week later, the growing fungus finally burst out from the cicada's buttocks, producing a mass of white flower spores. The fungus from the broken cicada is impressive. However, these cicadas continue to enjoy life as if they were nothing. As they fly, they drop spores, and the spores that fall from their buttocks infect other cicadas. This should be the "death salting Brother" in the insect world.

"come on, cicadas are a part of it. Don't worry." Picture: @ nusr_ett / Twitter

Could there be anything more exciting than that?

Yes. These cicadas, which sprinkle salt everywhere, have been turned upside down by high, a hallucinogen secreted by fungi.

The killer mace of the deadly poisonous bacteria "Lao Bai"

It is nothing new that Conidium can blow up insects, but you are so miserable as a cicada, shouldn't you lie on your stomach and wait to die? It is true that many other insects basically rest after being infected by fungi, but these cicadas are much more restless and active. There must be something wrong with this.

Now researchers have discovered the killer mace of fungi: using hallucinogens to control insects.

In May 2016, when 17-year-old cicadas and 13-year-old cicadas sprang up in the northeastern United States, researchers were lucky to collect about 150 unlucky "dead salt brothers." A year later, another cicada, which was also infected, was added to the experiment. The researchers analyzed the chemicals contained in a bunch of sporidium spores on the buttocks of various cicadas.

As a result, Psilocybin, the hallucinogen in psychedelic mushrooms, was found. When it was first discovered, the researchers' jaw almost fell off like the ass of a cicada, because psilocybin had not been found anywhere other than mushrooms in the past. And, about 900 million years ago, they parted ways with Cladosporium.

Psilocybin was first found in this mushroom (Psilocybe mexicana). Picture: Alan Rockefeller / Wikipedia

Surprisingly, the researchers also found that Cathinone, an amphetamine (Amphetamine), is an important component of bath salts. What is "bath salt"? Please refer to the Miami face gnawing case. Moreover, there is no precedent for finding Cassidone in fungi in the past. Only one kind of Arabian tea is known to contain caseone, and people in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa have a history of chewing this plant. These chemicals were not found in uninfected cicadas.

The bath salt-packed drug led a man to attack a homeless man in a state of madness and gnawed off his face. This is the face-gnawing case in Miami that shocked the world. Picture: drogen.bz

Cicada high has turned upside down. How crazy can it be?

Once the cicada is infected, it will behave strangely. In addition to a large mass of spores popping out from the buttocks, the male cicada will become extremely active and sexually active. They become teddy cicadas and want to mate when they see everything, even if they meet people of the same sex. In order to attract brothers, Teddy cicadas even flap their wings like females. I can't help but ask: where's your integrity?

These strange behaviors do not help the cicadas themselves, because their genitals are either eaten by fungi or fall off along with their buttocks. However, fungi benefit a lot from it, and the unscrupulous and useless work of Teddy cicadas will only help fungi infect more new hosts.

The uninfected male cicada (left) rips off the genitals of the fungal infected female cicada (right). Photo Source: 2 refs.

Obviously, the buttocks are about to fall off, but the infected cicadas can dance energetically with fungi and scatter spores relentlessly, perhaps thanks to casidone. The effect of psilocybin is hard to say. It can make humans hallucinate, but we don't know if it will have the same effect on cicadas. However, there is a hypothesis that psychedelic mushrooms release psilocybin to reduce the appetite of predatory insects, so that psychedelic mushrooms can enjoy rotten wood on their own. Perhaps Cercospora uses psilocybin to reduce the cicada's appetite and turn more energy into sexual desire.

Are you afraid of developing drugs?

The discovery of hallucinogens was so unexpected that the team could not help wondering if there was something wrong with the experiment. While the experiment was going on, the researchers felt guilty: some things were illegal, especially psilocybin, a primary controlled drug. In the United States, the study of psilocybin requires the permission of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. As a result, researchers began to worry that the DEA would suddenly show up with an electric shock and confiscate the subjects. For the researchers, the cicadas were their "salt babies", so they hurriedly wrote a zi shou email to the DEA.

"this. It's interesting, "replied the DEA. After some discussion, the DEA told the researchers that the experiment could be done safely because the amount of hallucinogen on the cicada was very small and the researchers did not intend to extract it.

As onlookers, what we are most concerned about is, of course, if people eat infected cicadas, will it be effective?

After all, fried cicadas are crunchy, and a lot of people eat them. Picture: baby's mother. / bean and fruit delicacies

The researchers speculate that eating a dozen or more infected cicadas is likely to get high. However, this may require cicadas to be in the early stages of infection, that is, before they fly out to spread salt. Because at this time, in order to better control the host, the fungus is likely to release more of these chemicals. Before you think about fried or stir-fried, don't forget the introduction at the beginning: the homes of these 17-year-old and 13-year-old cicadas are in the United States. What's more, we can't forget: cherish life and stay away from drugs.

After all, although these cicadas are high, they even lose their buttocks.

This magical animal can also be seen if you want to see it. Picture: Katja Schulz / Flickr

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