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17-year cicadas are almost here, are you ready?

17-year cicadas are almost here, are you ready?, 17-year cicadas are back! Every 17 years, like clockwork, an armada of periodical cicadas comes to the East Coast. Cicadas are sort of like locusts and they emerge from some 20 states on the East Coast every 17 years in order to mate, lay eggs and die. These insects, native to North America, are the planet's largest progeny and this event has not been seen since the first term of President Bill Clinton. The cicadas should arrive in late May or June of 2013 and will affect the entire region from northern Georgia to upstate New York, The Christian Science Monitor reported on May 5.

"There's a boat load. There could be a billion per square mile," said Michael Raupp, professor of entomology at the University of Maryland. "We are talking about millions of cicadas per square mile that have been waiting for 17 years now, " he adds.

Although similar to the biblical plagues of ancient Egypt, these millions of insects are harmless and only cause minor discomfort, but the noise that they produce can become a nightmare for the inhabitants of these states. "Each male can reach 90 decibels," explains the expert.

These insects, belonging to the family of cicadidae, usually measure up to an inch long and are colored black with an orange stripe-- depending on the species.

The plague could reach the entire New York metropolitan area, which almost its 20 million people would have to deal with about a million bugs per square mile. Historically these cicadas have been in the district of Bronx, "and could be seen in Central Park" this year. The citizens of Washington will have more luck. "We do not expect the cicadas reach the capital, it will be more likely to see them go to rural areas like Northern Virginia," said Raupp.

Experts are saying that the emergence of the 17-year cicadas will begin in mid-May and head north to the end of June, where they will all eventually die. While all this anticipation is relative, what is certain is that the 17-year cicadas emergence usually occurs when the soil temperature approaches 18 degrees Celsius, says the expert entomologist.

They are certainly very annoying to humans as they cover any surface, impair vision and are extremely noisy, but their emergence from the earth is one of the most impressive events of nature. In addition, they die after almost a month and a half and the next generation will not fly among American citizens until 2030.

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