Somebody kick me if I’m wrong, but, I’m pretty sure it’s now the start of cicada season in Australia.

I came across this article thanks to Google’s news alerts: UC Engineering Researchers Find Mercury In Cicadas. I’ve never eaten a cicada and I don’t plan on doing so in the future, but a lot of “cicada maniacs” do, so here’s your PSA.

Think twice before you eat one of Cincinnati’s Brood-X cicadas. That’s the warning from researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering, who have found surprising levels of mercury in these insects.

We have three new galleries:

NEW! Gina Scarborough’s Florida Cicada. 18 great pictures of a pink cicada. We need help identifying this cicada, so let us know if you have a clue what it is.

NEW! Giant pictures of Bill Lesar’s Tibicen dorsata. You’ve seen this cicada in an earlier post — now you can see huge versions of Bill’s photographs.

NEW! Andrea’s 2005 Cicada Nymph Exoskeleton Gallery. Three big pictures of discarded exoskeletons.

Way back in July a man by the name of Samuel Orr mailed me a DVD trailer of a film he had a part in making called Return of the 17-Year Cicadas. At the time my reaction was “I am simply blown away by its excellence. That might be the best cicada video I’ve seen so far”. Somehow I let it slip through the cracks and I forgot to write about it. In the mean time the movie has won first prize in the Non-Interactive Media category of the 2005 Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. I’m sure once the film reaches a wider audience — perhaps PBS or the Animal Planet channel (hint! hint!) — it will win more awards.

Read all about the new, award winning cicada documentary Return of the 17-Year Cicadas on the excellent EurekAlert! Science Reporting Alert website. Make sure you download and watch the video too. It is incredible.

Thanks to Roy and Dona for reminding me to post something about this film.

Someone asked for this so here goes: the Cicada Fear website has some great cicada larvae pictures.