John the Baptist preferred them with wild honey!
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Central Kentucky 17 Year Cicadas.
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John the Baptist preferred them with wild honey!
The momma cicada wanted to make sure her baby wasn’t quite old enough to buy tobacco.If the learned scientists are correct, the boy cicada said hey baby, let’s do it and wait 17 years for the fambly.
Seriously, how can this have been an evolutionary advantage?
And why not 7 or 27 years instead, why 17?
When they first emerge they are soft enough to eat without teeth. They still remind me of sweet shellfish.
Last year in Wisconsin we had our 17 year emergence. They expected
50000, to 1.5 million emerging from the ground, per acre of land. 20 to 25 holes per square foot.
They are the loudest bug I've ever known.
50000, to 1.5 million emerging from the ground, per acre of land. 20 to 25 holes per square foot.
They are the loudest bug I've ever known.
Raw preferably but they are good grilled. They're wings and legs should be removed if eaten whole otherwise eat only the abdomen.
My yard had developed a lumpy surface due to the number of them that have burrowed out.
They collect on lawn mowers when they're running. I think the cicadas like the sound.
Hardly, for me it's cultural as well as biblical. If you eat crustaceans, you're eating ocean bugs.
Agreed. A very long time ago, my wife and I were in the White River area of Mpumalanga, South Africa, walking through an indigenous forest surrounding a luxury hotel, a former hunting lodge and guest house, and the enormous noise of the cicada was almost deafening. I have since learned that their calls—produced by vibrating membranes—can reach up to 100 decibels, rivaling the volume of a chainsaw!
Remember hearing Brood XIX in the woods around our house when I was a kid. Sounded like alien spacecraft hovering somewhere in the darkness.
They are here in Eastern Kentucky (Pikeville); distant from where I live it sounds like a steady muted roar. Near Paintsville where my gal lives it is quite loud.
Against all science, reason and logic I am surely convinced, we and all the universe were created on purpose and it was not a process of evolution and accidents.
If the learned scientists are correct, the boy cicada said hey baby, let’s do it and wait 17 years for the fambly.
Seriously, how can this have been an evolutionary advantage?
And why not 7 or 27 years instead, why 17?
I think these critters had to be created just the way they are.
The purported answer is:
This raises more questions than it answers.
Most evolutionary advantages are unique to a situation, but this one would be broadly advantageous to any prey animal in almost any situation. So, why did this mutation arise among cicadas and not among other prey animals?
You could answer that perhaps similar mutations did arise among other prey animals, but that natural history didn't select for them. But all that that means is that in other species, annual cycle populations survived just fine so that longer-than-annual cycle populations were unnecessary.
But this then raises the next question: why would cicadas be the only species whose annual-cycle populations were decimated, but who also had a longer-cycle alternative?
And assuming that was the case, then how did those annual cycle populations reproduce for however long they reproduced, without going extinct, up until the time that the 17-year-cycle mutation happened? Because what this is really suggesting is that predation was no problem for cicadas up until the exact juncture at which they happened to mutate for a 17 year cycle. In other words, it's suggesting that all was well for cicadas for countless [centuries? millennia? more?] until a predation-based extinction event happened, BUT that predation-based extinction event just happened to happen at the exact same time that this long-cycle mutation arose, so that after all the parents were gobbled up by predators and the universe thought that cicadas were no more, SURPRISE, babies came out of the ground all at once, 17 years later, for the first time because this mutation happened to arise in the exact year that it was needed.
Pardon me for remaining unpersuaded.
There are two possibilities that are much easier to believe:
(1) That cicades just came into existence already on a 17 year cycle.
(2) That cicades had latent genetic material for a 17-year-cycle, waiting to be triggered by some environmental factor for expression (see "epigenetics").
Both of these possibilities assume personal intentionality in their creation.
because predators aren't good at keeping a long calendar.Against all science, reason and logic I am surely convinced, we and all the universe were created on purpose and it was not a process of evolution and accidents.
If the learned scientists are correct, the boy cicada said hey baby, let’s do it and wait 17 years for the fambly.
Seriously, how can this have been an evolutionary advantage?
because they do that too or at least have several cycles.
The idea that evelution is incompatible with creationism doesn't sit with me. Makes sense that the creators toolbox would involve many tools.
because it's a give and take and there are many solutions to one problem. Also big loud slow changes the game. Why do some animals eat grass and some bugs?
Also reminds me of what a preacher with a degree in biology said once. God is a brilliant C student. Creation is often passing/good enough. To survive and pass on traits all an animal has to do is survive that long in enough numbers. They don't have to do it well or elegantly. On a more philosophical note he also pointed out that as long as something can survive God lets it stick around.
And one more way to look at it. Business can work the same way. Sometimes a company can do well by filling a odd niche. But if every single company tried to corner the same parts of their market that wouldn't work so great. If every restaurant served the same style of food in a town none would thrive. But one makes really expensive stuff for people to take their time with and another does convenient quick food. A vegan place can exist because it's not doing the same thing the steak house is doing.
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