Fungus Making PA's 17-Year Cicadas Sex Crazy, Expert Warns

PENNSYLVANIA — The 17-year cicada mating season about to get underway in Pennsylvania is already basically death sex 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 a rather ghastly peril: certain types of the fungus Massospora that contain the same psychoactive chemicals found in hallucinogenic mushrooms and street amphetamines.

And as these psychoactive compounds do to humans, the fungus Massospora is causing some bizarre cicada behavior.

Apparently, it's causing them to do it so furiously that their genitals fall off.

In fact, they continue doing it even after their genitals are gone and are copulating without regard to the gender of the other bug, according to study co-author Matthew Kasson, a plant pathologist at the University of West Virginia.

Cicadas infected by the fungus, which they encounter underground, "engage in hypersexual behaviors," Kasson said in a news release announcing the 2019 study.

Cicadas go through a lot before their genitals fall off. 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.

Even with missing body parts — important ones given the job of cicadas during their brief time in the sunlight — "they would be whistling as they walk down the street," Kasson told the American Society of Microbiology, according to an article in Smithsonian.

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 and billions of cicadas associated with Brood X, or the Great Eastern Brood, are already causing a big buzz. Besides Pennsylvania, cicadas are 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.