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TODAY'S BIG TOPIC:

THEY PARTY TIL THEY DROP

Thursday, May 27, 2021

PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA HALE

By Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor

The cicadas are here. Trillions of them are emerging from the ground in screaming, writhing masses across the eastern U.S. Here at Nat Geo, we’re stoked. I sent my co-workers a Slack poll asking if they’re excited, and a little more than half answered “heck yes!” The others were split between “ehhh” and “nope.” I myself am in the heck-yes category, but then again, I’ve never experienced it before.

My colleague, writer Amy McKeever, however, isn’t so excited. “I appreciate their existence, but I was here 17 years ago and am still traumatized by the cicada that flew into my mouth while I was on a run. These insects have no boundaries.” (Graphic designer Taylor Maggiacomo puts a more charitable spin on it: “They’re charmingly clumsy!”)

Brood X has been underground for 17 years, quietly sipping the sap from tree roots and biding their time. Now the weather’s warm, and they’re ready to party.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime rager. Their only goals are to eat and mate. Eat and mate. Eat and mate. The males sing raucous songs in unison to attract the ladies. If they’re lucky, a potential mate will give a little flit of her wings to show interest.

Plenty of other animals are interested in the cicadas too. Keep in mind they’re not locusts—they’re not going to destroy crops or gardens. They are, however, great food for all of spring’s new babies, from fledgling birds to opossum youngsters. Even the animals at the zoo are having a ball, Natasha Daly reports.

But like all good parties, this too must end. They all die.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DARLYNE A. MURAWSKI

Their bodies (pictured above left before they emerge) will litter lawns, sidewalks, fields, and forests with a crunchy carpet of insect exoskeletons (above right). Their eggs—up in tree branches—will eventually hatch into larvae, which will crawl back into the earth and begin the 17-year countdown all over again.

Our latest Overheard podcast captures this noisy, bittersweet party-til-you-drop cycle perfectly. Its title? “How Cicadas Become Flying Saltshakers of Death.”

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

World’s tiniest pig returning to the wild: Once thought extinct, the shy, 10-inch-tall pygmy hog is steadily increasing in number because of captive breeding. Some have been released into their native habitat in the Himalaya foothills, and the wild population is growing as well, Kamakshi Ayyar reports for Nat Geo.

Cataloging elephant ‘talk’: Want to understand elephant behavior? There’s a library for that. Drawing on decades of study, Nat Geo Explorer Joyce Poole and her husband Petter Granli have created the African Elephant Ethogram—the most comprehensive audiovisual library of African savanna elephant behavior. With just 415,000 elephants remaining—down from five million in 1950—Poole hopes the ethogram inspires people “to explore and contemplate the hearts and minds of elephants.”

Wildlife consumption declines: The pandemic has sliced demand for wildlife consumption, with sweeping bans on the sale and consumption of wildlife worldwide. A report from the World Wildlife Fund finds that nearly 30 percent of people surveyed across Asia and the United States say they have consumed less wildlife, or stopped consuming it altogether, during the global health crisis, Time reports.

Another creature from the deep: Southern California beaches have become a repository for strange animals. Just weeks after a mysterious anglerfish washed ashore found, a slender snipe eel appeared, the Orange County Register reports. The eel normally lives a thousand to 13,000 feet below the ocean surface.

Whistleblower complaint: ReconAfrica, a Canadian company exploring for oil and gas in southern Africa, is accused of misleading investors in a confidential complaint submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this month. Shared exclusively with National Geographic, it alleges that to drive up its stock price, the company failed to disclose crucial information about its prospects and plans to look for oil and gas deposits across 13,200 square miles of sensitive wilderness in Namibia and Botswana, a region that includes part of the watershed of the famous Okavango Delta and six wildlife reserves, Nat Geo reports.

The preceding report is from our Wildlife Watch unit, supported in part by the National Geographic Society.

INSTAGRAM PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @DAISYGILARDINI

A pup, resting: It’s rare to get an up-close visit with a Weddell seal, but photographer Daisy Gilardini did in November, on a beach on Half Moon Island in Antarctica. “Just a few meters from crashing waves on a bank of pure white snow, a mother Weddell seal rested with her young pup. I spent the next three hours observing this cute little baby,” says Gilardini, who has documented the polar regions for two decades. The pup, shy at first, started playing with his flippers and making the silliest grimaces. “I could not stop giggling,” Gilardini says.

Wayward seal: The Weddell who went from Antarctica to Brazil

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARTINHO GM

Antkeeping climbs in popularity: In the last decade, tens of thousands of people worldwide have taken up the hobby. Most are teenagers or younger, but the practice has come a long way since the toy ant farms of the 1950s. With cutting-edge ant homes, called formicariums, such as this one made from the branch of an ash tree, hobbyists are growing larger and healthier colonies than ever. Some are even documenting the life cycles of rare ants and making fascinating observations for scientists, who sometimes struggle to keep colonies alive. “Instead of beating my head on the pavement trying to solve this ... I said, Why not let the experts who know how to care for these organisms do that work for me?” says Corrie Moreau, an entomologist at Cornell University and a National Geographic Explorer.

IN A FEW WORDS

The ants look like a bunch of bats all clustered on the ceiling. Then if you look closer, they're all holding these pale larvae in between their jaws—just very vampire-like with these babies off the ground.

Andrew Burchill

Myrmecologist

From: The unlikely rise of antkeeping

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THE LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE GRALL

Storage units: Many animals have built-in containers that help them tote babies, carry tools, and gather food. In seahorse couples, the female deposits her eggs into the male, who holds them in his frontal brood pouch. After 14 to 28 days, he delivers up to 1,500 fry (babies) by water birth. Other animals with pouches include sea otters and chipmunks, Hicks Wogan writes in the June edition of National Geographic.

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This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams, with photo selections by Jen Tse. Have an idea or a link? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

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