Fungus Makes NYC's 17-Year Cicadas Sex Crazy, Expert Warns

NEW YORK CITY — The 17-year cicada mating season about to get underway in NYC is already already basically a death sentence for the insects, which spend nearly two decades underground just waiting for this moment.

But researchers say the insects, which will die after answering nature's call to perpetuate their species, face another peril: certain types of the fungus Massospora that contain the same psychoactive chemicals found in hallucinogenic mushrooms and street amphetamines.

The psychoactive compounds are causing some bizarre cicada behavior.

Apparently, it's causing them to be so furiously sexually active that their genitals fall off, according to a study co-authored by Matthew Kasson, a plant pathologist at the University of West Virginia.

The insects first encounter the fungus underground, the study says. It starts to ravage their bodies when they emerge.

Cicadas infected by the fungus "engage in hypersexual behaviors," Kasson said in a news release announcing the study.

The fungus overtakes their bodies and eats through their limbs. Their abdomens fall off as the fungus grows like a sponge inside them. This only increases the likelihood fungal spores will be spread through the group.

Yet they persist.

Kasson and his team started studying the cicadas after the 2016 emergence, according to a University of West Virginia news release. One of Kasson's students, Angie Macias, even coined a name for the cicadas that seems right out of a heavy metal band's repertoire: "flying salt shakers of death."

Kasson thinks the research could open a new frontier in the development of pharmaceutical drugs.

So, can you get high by eating a cicada infected by the fungus, which has the same psilocybin found in "magic mushrooms"?

"Maybe," Kasson said in the UWV news release, "if you're motivated enough.

"Here is the thing," he continued, "the psychoactive compounds were just two of less than 1,000 compounds found in these cicadas. Yes, they are notable, but there are other compounds that might be harmful to humans.

"I wouldn't take that risk," he said.

The billions of cicadas associated with Brood X, or the Great Eastern Brood, are already causing a big buzz. In NYC, their emergence would likely be in Central Park and parts of The Bronx and Staten Island. They're also expected in Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.