If you had “flying saltshakers of death” on your 2024 bingo card, we’d love to talk to whoever printed that thing for you.
Scientists say that some of the cicada hordes that are about to emerge across America won’t succeed in reproducing…well, they won’t reproduce cicadas, anyway.
Some of the cicadas are infected with a “zombie fungus” called Massospora cicadina that controls the insects and builds up until the rear end of each infected cicada falls off and exposes a white fungal plug in place of its genitals.
That means they spread the fungus when they try to mate, but the bugs then sprinkle the fungus in their wakes as they fly around like “flying saltshakers of death.”
The only good news in this barrage of mental images no one wanted is that the fungus is harmless to humans.
One final mental image from this story: scientists advise people to check any cicadas they try to eat this year because, as Dr. Matt Kasson of West Virginia University said, “you do not want to put those in your mouth.” It feels like “don’t put the flying saltshakers of death in your mouth” is advice no one would need to be given, but here we are.