Category: Pop Culture

Cicada Christmas Lights

I made cicada Christmas lights using some LED USB Christmas lights, and some plastic cicada whistles from Australia. The song of cicadas heralds the Christmas season in many countries in the southern hemisphere like Australia.

CicadaMania Cicada Christmas Lights from Cicada Mania on Vimeo.

Cicada Christmas Lights

Here’s the whistles:

Bonus Christmas Cicada stuff:

AI Santa Cicada:

There is a cicada nicknamed the Kobonga Christmas Clanger in Australia (thx David Marshall and Kathy Hill ):

Christmas Clanger Kobanga

How about a cicada Christmas Wreath? This wreath was made by Jenny Pate back in 2004.

Cicada Christmas Wreath made by Jenny Pate.

Or a Cicada Christmas Card from Sam Orr:

Cicada Christmas card

An illustration I made a few years ago:
Cicada Christmas

Christmas Cards:

Christmas Card

Christmas ornaments made with cicada skins?

Clear Christmas ornaments with cicada exuvia

FAQs Pop Culture

Can you see letters like W & P on a cicada’s wings?

Post author By Dan
Post date June 27, 2015
3 Comments on Can you see letters like W & P on a cicada’s wings?

If you use your imagination, you can see the shapes of letters on the wings of some cicadas.

W in cicada wing

There is an “urban legend” that W means there will be a War, and P means there will be Peace.

Aside from letters, some people say they see a lightning bolt! âš¡ï¸

Arts & Crafts Callogaeana Cryptotympana Hemisciera Tacua Talainga Thopha Tosena Zammara

Better IDs for E.A. Seguy Cicada Illustrations

Post author By Dan
Post date March 21, 2015
2 Comments on Better IDs for E.A. Seguy Cicada Illustrations

The NCSU Libraries Rare and Unique Digital Collections website recently reminded the us of artist Eugene Alain (E.A.) Seguy’s insect illustrations. Seguy created these illustrations in the 1920’s, and as you might imagine, some of the cicada names cited in the notes for these illustrations have changed. Names typically change when cicadas are reclassified due to discoveries about their biology, or when we realize that someone else had actually named them earlier than the namer currently given credit.

Here are the two illustrations, the accompanying identification, and corrected identifications.

Illustration:

Accompanying identification:

1. Tacua speciosa. Indes; 2. Polyneura ducalis. Indes Or.; 3. Cicada saccata. Australie; 4. Cicada fascialis. Siam; 5. Tozena melanoptera. Indes Or.

Corrected or expanded identification:

Tacua speciosa. This is correct, although there are two subspecies of T. speciosa, I’m going to guess it is Tacua speciosa speciosa (Illiger, 1800) based on the location.
Polyneura ducalis. This is correct. Polyneura ducalis Westwood, 1840.
Cicada saccata. This is now: Thopha saccata (Fabricius, 1803).
Cicada fascialis. This is now: Cryptotympana facialis facialis (Walker, 1858). Update: David Emery says this might be a Cryptotympana acuta (Signoret, 1849).
Tozena melanoptera. Close enough. Tosena melanoptera melanoptera (White, 1846). There are a few unnamed subspecies.

Illustration:

Accompanying identification:

1. Goeana festiva. Indes; 2. Zammara tympanum. Amérique du Sud; 3. Goeana ochracea. Indes; 4. Phenax variegata. Brésil; 5. Hemisciera maculipennis. Amazone

Corrected or expanded identification:

Goeana festiva is actually Callogaeana festiva festiva (Fabricius, 1803).
Zammara tympanum. This is correct. Zammara tympanum (Fabricius, 1803).
Goeana ochracea is way off. It is a Talainga binghami Distant, 1890.
Phenax variegata is not a cicada, is it a fulgoroid planthopper, but the id is correct.
Hemisciera maculipennis is correct. Hemisciera maculipennis (de Laporte, 1832) aka the “Stop and Go” cicada, because its colors resemble the colors of a stop light.

Japan Toys and Amusements

A new cicada keychain toy from Japan

Post author By Dan
Post date July 10, 2014
No Comments on A new cicada keychain toy from Japan

There is a new cicada keychain toy from Japan. It comes in five colors, and produces its sound using a wind up mechanism. Buy it here.

Brood XXII Pop Culture

Cicada Beer and Brood XXII

Post author By Dan
Post date April 15, 2014
2 Comments on Cicada Beer and Brood XXII

Southern Prohibition Brewing is offering Cicada themed (but not flavored) beer this year. Just in time for Brood XXII.

Cicada Beer

Their site says cicadas are their favorite “invasive species”, but cicadas are not an invasive species, however it can feel like an invasion when periodical cicadas arrive.

BTW, here’s the first news article about Brood XXII I’ve found. It’s from the LSU AgCenter and features Christopher Carlton, LSU AgCenter entomologist and director of the Louisiana State Arthropod Museum.

No signs of Brood XXII cicadas on social media yet.

3301

Cicada 3301 Logo

UPDATE: the cicada is a Distantalna splendida.

A few weeks ago someone asked me what species of cicada the Cicada 3301 logo represented. At the time I did not know what Cicada 3301 was. Later on I learned that Cicada 3301 is some kind of international organization that uses puzzles to recruit people who are really good at figuring out puzzles … or something like that. This sounds very interesting, and it might be something I would be into if I had more free time.

Here is the 3301 logo (which is presumably copyrighted by the Cicada 3301 organization):

cicada 3301

The logo appears to be a photo of a cicada processed with an emboss filter. (I’ve seen other versions of the logo, which look like the embossed logo run through an ASCII filter that makes it look like the green alphanums on a black background like the Matrix or the Homebrew setting for Terminal windows on the Mac.)

The interesting thing about the 3301 logo is that the cicada appears to be a collage. The veins of the right hind wing are different than the left hind wing. Either the wing was taken from a different species, or the lines that appear in the anal lobe were cloned/copied to cover the entire hindwing.

cicada wings

Interesting. When I have more time I’ll try to ID the actual cicada — or at least the primary species the image was made from.

I wonder what 3301 stands for? Entomologists Enjoy Only Insects?

Film Periodical

Cicada – The Insect Methuselah

Post author By Dan
Post date December 3, 2013
No Comments on Cicada – The Insect Methuselah

I picked up a film on 16mm (what they showed to kids in school before VHS tapes were popular) called Cicada – The Insect Methuselah. I would love to see it, but I don’t have a 16mm projector (who does?) The film is presumably about 17/13 Year cicadas. I held the film up to a light, and it indeed features the Magicicada species.

The film was produced by the Moody Institute of Science in 1955, and I assume they still hold the copyright to the film. It is 12 minutes in length.

Update: Roy Troutman contacted us to let us know that this video footage can be found in another video: The Mystery of The Three Clocks, which you can watch here:

The most impressive thing about the video is the anatomical model of the cicada. I wish I had one (but I might have to go back to the 50’s to get one).

Ecuador Halloween Zammara Zammarini

Zammara with a collar like Dracula! Zammara smaragdina

Post author By Dan
Post date October 15, 2013
No Comments on Zammara with a collar like Dracula! Zammara smaragdina

Just in time for Halloween… the Zammara a genus of cicadas with a collar like Dracula!

Andreas Kay has been posting photos of the insects of Ecuador on Flickr for around a year now. He’s posted many excellent cicada photos, particularly, photos of Zammara. They are among the most visually interesting cicadas.

Emerald Cicada, Zammara smaragdina:

Here’s an illustration from Insecta. Rhynchota. Hemiptera-Homoptera. Vol. I by W. L. Distant and The Rev Canon W. W. Fowler, F.L.S:

Zammara smaragdina

Here the Scientific classification:
Family: Cicadidae
Subfamily: Cicadinae
Tribe: Zammarini
Genus: Zammara
Species: Zammara smaragdina Walker, 1850

Here’s an article about Collared cicadas of Mexico, Central & South America.