‘Zombie Cicadas’ Are A Thing and Have Arrived In The U.S. Because 2020 Has No Chill

Okay. Who had Zombie Cicadas for August?

Winner!! Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding!

Cicadas are my least favorite bug in the history of EVER. When I lived in Texas, you could hear them in the trees, and it sounded like a completely terrifying swarm of evil little creatures.

Not to mention, they are HELLA ugly. Like totally creepy, with their beady eyes, their shiny bodies, and those super long wings. *Shiver*

Now, I find out there are something called Zombie Cicadas.

Burn it down!! Burn the entire thing down!!

The good news, if there CAN be good news about Zombie Cicadas, is that they don’t appear to be harmful to humans. They are just gross.

They are, however, crazy deadly to each other. But, they aren’t just deadly — they turn into zombies before they die. Like, I’m not joking.

So there is a fungus that acts sort of like rabies in the cicada population. When a male becomes infected with the fungus, it starts doing a sort of mating dance, mimicking a female cicada.

This, of course, initises other males to come over and “mate,” because they think the infected cicada is female.

Once the interested cicada flocks to the infected cicada to mate, the infected cicada will attempt to transfer the fungus over to its peer. Then, the (fungus) will begin to eat away at the cicada’s abdomen from the inside, filling it up with yellow fungal spores.

Yahoo Life

Not only will the now zombie-like cicada lose half its body to this ferocious fungus, but it will be brainwashed and tricked into performing female mating rituals in order to continue spreading the virus. Think of it as a living death—the cicada will continue to exist, but in a mutated life form. The spores that form in each cicada’s abdomen can be dropped onto other cicadas to further transmit the disease.

Yahoo Life

There isn’t a whole lot of research on this cicada fungus, yet. That isn’t going to stop me from avoiding the bugs like the plague.

Vile, disgusting little creatures!