Cicadas pee stronger than humans and an STD can turn them into zombies. Are they nature’s weirdos?
- Cicadas, the strongest urinators in the animal kingdom, are being ravaged by a sexually transmitted disease that turns them into zombies
- A fungus, that turns cicadas into zombies and causes their genitals to fall off, is ‘even stranger than science fiction’
These insects are the strongest urinators in the animal kingdom, with flows that put humans and elephants to shame. They have pumps in their heads that pull moisture from the roots of trees, allowing them to feed for more than a decade underground. They are rescuers of caterpillars.
And they are being ravaged by a sexually transmitted disease that turns them into zombies.
Pumps in the head
Inside trees are sugary, nutrient-heavy saps that flow through tissue called phloem. Most insects love the sap. But not cicadas – they go for tissue called xylem, which carries mostly water and a bit of nutrients.
And it’s not easy to get into the xylem, which does not just flow out when a bug taps into it because it’s under negative pressure. The cicada can get the fluid because its outsize head has a pump, said University of Alabama Huntsville entomologist Carrie Deans.
They use their proboscis like a tiny straw – about the width of a hair – with the pump sucking out the liquid, said Georgia Tech biophysics professor Saad Bhamla. They spend nearly their entire lives drinking, year after year.
“It’s a hard way to make a living,” Deans said.
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