Well, but also not all Cicadas come out only every 17 years. It's just that the VAST majority do. I remmber every summer growing up in Tucson we;d have some amount of Cicadas on the trees. We did terrible things to the little buggers...tie a string around them and just let them fly in circles forever...we were brutal kids I guess...
Quote:
Originally posted by Arkcon:
quote: Originally posted by Kamog:
What I find interesting is, why do ALL the cicadas of the same species happen to follow the exact same 17-year life cycle? Why aren't the life cycles staggered so that each year, some of them emerge from the ground, finishing their 17-year periods? Why are they so syncronized? So at any given time, all the cicadas alive are exactly the same age!
I wonder how it all got started in the beginning.
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This is common in the natural world. Randomly spaced "bumper crops" followed by low years so predators don't overwhelm the prey. Happens with acorns, cherries, and in this case Brood X {wiki}