Will Eating 17-Year Cicadas Make Georgia Pets Sick?

GEORGIA — When the 17-year periodical cicadas emerge in Georgia in a few weeks, the odds are good that if allowed close to them, your cats and dogs will go after the insects like they’re tuna or cheese slathered with peanut butter — and, in all likelihood, promptly hack them up.

But should you worry?

Not really.

Cicadas are edible, for humans and other mammals. Snakes snack on cicadas, too. Think about it: For 17 years, the periodical cicadas have been underground, feeding on tree roots. They’re loaded with protein and low in fat. Fido and Fluffy could do a lot worse with off-diet treats.

The biggest problem is the exoskeletons may be a tad hard for pets to digest, so they may have upset tummies, according to the Pet Poison Helpline. Or, they may simply overindulge on cicadas, Elizabeth Barnes, an exotic forest pest educator at Purdue University, told The Indianapolis Star.

Indiana is among 15 states and the District of Columbia where billions and billions of cicadas from Brood X, known as the Great Eastern Brood, will begin pushing their way through the ground in May and June. Others are Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

In our state, the cicadas are expected to emerge in Union, White and possibly Gilmer counties, as well as Blairsville, Ellijay and Norcross around the first week of May and die off in June.

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Barnes told The Indy Star that many animal species — turkeys, for example — bulk up after a cicada emergence. They’re that easy to feed on.

But back to your pet. The cicadas don’t sting or bite (in fact, they don’t have the mouthparts for biting), so that won’t be a problem.

Some pets may have an allergy to cicadas, “but as far as poisonous or sting or a bite, or just being sick from any kind of venom or anything, your pets are perfectly safe," Dr. Vernard Hodges, a Warner Robins, Georgia, veterinarian told news station WMAZ.

If they gobble too many up at one time, the cicadas can be a choking hazard. And smaller animals may have greater problems than large ones.

“You could possibly have some GI issues if the exoskeleton goes through,” Hodges told the news station. “If it's a smaller dog and the smaller intestines can't quite pass it through, or if they eat it whole, that can be a problem.”

The emergence of the swarm of Magicicada cassinii — the scientific name for the insects — is one of the true marvels of nature in a still-being-written lesson in periodical cicada science.

The species with an extraordinarily long life cycle — the longest of any insect on the planet — remains somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle. They spend more than a decade underground feeding on tree roots before their synchronized emergence as young adults.

The males sing, raising quite a ruckus with their mating call. There's some urgency to it: The males live three, maybe four, weeks after mating.

The females don't sing but wait quietly to do their job perpetuating the species — to lay as many eggs as possible, up to 600 — before they die. They split the bark on living tree trunks, branches and twigs, burrow in, and lay between 24 and 48 eggs at a time.

According to one theory, cicada life cycles are prime numbers — that is, numbers that can only be divided by 1 or by themselves — as part of an evolutionary strategy that tricks predators.

University of Indiana biologist Keith Clay said in an interview with the American Association for the Advancement of Science that periodical cicadas are easy to catch and eat. For example, copperheads treat cicadas like fast food — they're abundant and easy to obtain — and plenty do get eaten by these and similarly opportunistic predators, but enough survive to keep the species going.

"The main hypothesis is that it's very difficult for predators to have a similar life cycle, where they could actually specialize on these cicadas 'cause they also would have to have a 17-year life cycle," he said. "If cicadas came out every 16 years, for example, predators with two-, four, and eight-year life cycles would be around that year to eat them."

Another hypothesis about the synchronized emergence of periodical cicadas is that the forced developmental delay was an adaptation to climate cooling during the ice ages.