Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/01/parasite-fills-cicadas-with-am.html
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Poor little fellas. When they are adults, they don’t even have mouths. Their only role in life at that point is mate and starve to death.
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Surprisingly, he/she didn’t say no.
Dang, story of my life.
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Infected cicadas behave strangely. Despite their horrific injuries, males become hyperactive and hypersexual. They frenetically try to mate with anything they can find, including with other males. They’ll even mimic the wing-flicking signals of females to lure males toward them. None of this does them any good—their genitals have either been devoured by the fungus or have fallen off with the rest of their butts. Instead, this behavior only benefits the fungus, allowing its spores to find new hosts.
Geez, it sounds like something out of Hannibal.
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the fungus is doping them with meth and shrooms.
In what world are methamphetamine and cathinone synonymous?
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Cathinone IS very nearly an amphetamine, AKA benzoylethanamine or β-keto-amphetamine, ya know. Some sources directly call it one but many don’t.
Synonymous? No. Close enough to work as a bit of humor in a light-science article? Certainly.
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Well, obviously I wouldn’t wolf down whole cicadas like a chum, instead I would freeze-dry them in liquid nitrogen, grind them up, and them either smoke’em or snort them.
I mean, duh’!
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Cicada is the sound of summer here in Texas. I remember many times sitting outside in the heat and the sound of all the cicadas creating a very noticeable auditory hallucinogenic and soporific effect.
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I think it was Brood X 2000 when two cicadas locked in coitus flew in through my open car window while driving and landed on my steering wheel. They continued to hump themselves crazy just sitting there on the wheel oblivious to my ten and two and 65. As far as I can remember they were fungus free but, it’s now funny to think that they might have been tripping balls. Or what ever they have going on down there.
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brb, foraging for one dozen infected cicadas
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Yeah, I experienced that cicade trance in Florida. It rmade me think of shamans shaking rattles.
This article reminds me of a recent string on a neighborhood bulletin board. Two different people posted that their dogs were acting weird: staring into space, taking a few steps, then standing still & shivering. Turns out that the dogs had eaten the poop of cannabis users. Which now, with so many edibles around, is pretty common, apparently. The vets recognised symptoms right away.
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So… locust swarms… are just Jonesing for Pizza? [Weighs the same as a duck?]
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Just like Big Pharma, which is also a parasite, does to humans.
It doses its victims with mind-altering drugs. Perhaps that’s why “the cicadas walk around as if nothing’s wrong even though a third of their body has fallen off,” Kasson says.
Nature is fucking terrifying.
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Wow, terrifying new zombie movie angle: the dead aren’t out to eat people…they’re out to have sex with them.
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Zombie porn! God I wish I made movies.
Surprised no one has pointed out that this is pure Cronenberg albeit with different things. ‘Rabid’ comes to mind.
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Isn’t that De Sade’s more rigorous, but largely ignored, “4 to 6 Weeks of Sodom at 17 Year Intervals”?
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