Kristi Shirley has been captivated by the cicada army marching through the trees of a park near his home in southern Illinois.
“There's nothing like it. It's like, wow, is this what we're seeing in front of our eyes?” Shirley said.
By now, you've probably seen the headlines: two groups of periodic cicadas are emerging at the same time for the first time in two centuries, with billions of noisy insects appearing in 16 US states.
But biologist Gene Kritsky says this insect invasion may have a deeper meaning. Cicadas come together at a time when it's all too easy to see what separates people, as if nature is (once again) trying to capture our collective attention.
In April, a large crowd gathered to see the total solar eclipse. Earlier this month, millions of people marveled at how northern lights danced across the night sky. Both events were accurately predicted by astronomers.
“Now we're seeing regular cicadas coming out of the ground, predicted by entomologists. And at a time when people have lost faith in science, this shows that science works and we're doing it right,” Kritsky said.
These natural events offer a kind of shared experience for people to put aside their differences and come together to marvel at Mother Nature.
“I was at an eclipse party, and there were people of all political persuasions and we didn't talk about politics. We saw the solar eclipse,” Kritsky said.
Now Kritsky has created an app called Cicada Safari to track where and when bugs arrive. It's bringing together people who find something special about the unique-looking insects: people like Shirley, who calls herself a “super user” of the app, and Blaine Rothauser, who struck up a conversation with Shirley about the rare cicadas minutes after meeting her. in the park near his house.
The power of cicadas seemed to give these total strangers something to bond over. Instead of questions like “What do you do?”, “What do you believe in?” or 'Who do you support?', Krisky says that “the important thing is, are we all curious?”
And while it often seems like people live in separate worlds, we actually share one.
Ben Tracy
