1 Cicadas or Locusts

2 Most 17-year cicadas have red eyes.

3

4 17-year cicadas will hatch in West Virginia in 2012

5 People eat cicadas, and wild animals and domestic pets eat them, too.

6 Cicadas don’t eat solid food, but they use their slender, straw-like mouth parts to drink tree fluids.

7 Only males make the sound for which they are famous. On their abdomens they have tymbals. Muscles pop the tymbals in and out

8 There are also 13-year cicadas. They re-emerged in Here are some maps that show how they are distributed.

9

10

11

12

13 The nymphs emerge on a spring evening when the soil temperature at about 8 in depth is above 63° F. In most years this works out to late April or early May in far southern states, and late May to early June in the far northern states. Emerging nymphs climb to a suitable place on the nearby vegetation to complete their transformation into an adult cicada. They molt one last time and then spend about six days in the leaves waiting for their exoskeleton to harden completely. Just after this final molt, the adults are white but darken within an hour.° Fne l harden com

14

15

16

17

18

19

20 After mating, the female cuts V-shaped slits in the bark of young twigs and lays approximately 20 eggs in each, for a total of 600 or more eggs. After about six to ten weeks, the eggs hatch and the newborn nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow and begin another 13 or 17-year cycle.

21

22

23 Locusts

24 The largest known locust swarm covered 400 square miles and contained approximately 40 billion insects. Since a locust (which is really a grasshopper) eats the equivalent of his own weight in a day, a swarm can easily eat as much as 1000 people. The desert locust is about 3 inches long.

25

26

27

28 Grasshoppers are usually solitary insects, feeding alone, but when too many get in one place, they swarm. 28

29 What creatures did God use as plagues in Egypt?

30 Frogs,

31 lice,

32 flies,

33 and locusts! 33

34 Some people think cicadas and locusts are alike, but they are not. Cicadas have no teeth and do not eat plants, but locusts do. They are two creatures that look somewhat alike, but are not.

35 Peace is like that, too. There are two different kinds of peace that seem alike on the surface. One peace comes from Jesus--“My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you” (John 14:27). Another peace comes from compromise--“If you were of the world, the world would love his own” (John 15:19). But they are not the same.

36 Credits: Slide 27 courtesy of FAO United Nations Slide 30 courtesy of James Lee at flickr