{"id":5494,"date":"2015-06-28T10:21:27","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T17:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/?p=5494"},"modified":"2026-06-09T08:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:51:14","slug":"do-cicadas-stink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/do-cicadas-stink\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Cicadas Stink?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Very few cicadas stink while alive, unlike an insect like the Stink Bug (Pentatomidae). No North American cicadas have a foul or offensive odor while alive. When cicadas are dead though, their rotting bodies can have a putrid odor, especially Magicicada cicadas because they are fatty. Even in my collection of deceased cicadas, only the periodical cicadas smell bad. <\/p>\n<p>A few species do stink (have a foul odor) when alive. Chris Simon, one of the premier world cicada experts sent us this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThere are at least two South East Asian cicada that stink. One can smell them when walking nearby in the forest according to Boulard\u2019s Cicadas of Thailand volume 2, Page 296.  Huechys sanguinea and its sibling species H. philaemata have bright contrasting red and black warning coloration and these are \u201ccombined with an unpleasant smell and emetic physical properties.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>More information about these &#8220;little stinkers&#8221;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/huechys-sanguinea-2\/\">Huechys sanguinea<\/a> details about the species<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/huechys-sanguinea\/\">Huechys sanguinea<\/a> a photo of a teneral H. sanguinea <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.inaturalist.org\/observations?subview=map&#038;taxon_id=494096\">iNaturalist map of H. sanguinea<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Very few cicadas stink while alive, unlike an insect like the Stink Bug (Pentatomidae). No North American cicadas have a foul or offensive odor while alive. When cicadas are dead though, their rotting bodies can have a putrid odor, especially Magicicada cicadas because they are fatty. Even in my collection of deceased cicadas, only the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faqs","category-huechys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}