After a roughly decade-and-a-half hiatus, trillions of cicadas are ready to come out this summer — literally


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As regions of the South and Midwest brace themselves for the respective emergence of 13-year Brood XIX and 17-year Brood XIII— the first time two broods have appeared at the same time since the early 1800s, per CBS News — there’s already trouble in chirping, screaming paradise: A sexually-transmitted fungus could turn them into incredibly horny, gay bugs. Ci-cay-das, if you will.



Known as Massospora cicadina, the contagious condition causes a white fungus to overtake infected cicadas’ bodies. But before the ailment progresses, prompting the bugs’ genitals to fall off, they enjoy one hell of a last hurrah, showing a whole lot of “hyper-sexualized” behavior — and for several males, even turning gay.


"The cicada continues to participate in normal activities, like it would if it was healthy," Kasson, who teaches Mycology and Forest Pathology at West Virginia University explained of the condition. "Like it tries to mate, it flies around, it walks on plants. Yet, a third of its body has been replaced by fungus. That's really kind of bizarre."


But even with this layer of fungus, infected cicadas will do their darndest to get their tiny little rocks off, even impersonating females so that males will come sleep with them.


“Males, for example, they’ll continue to try and mate with females — unsuccessfully, because again, their back end is a fungus,” Kasson continued.  “But they’ll also pretend to be females to get males to come to them. And that doubles the number of cicadas that an infected individual comes in contact with.”


Ouch. For the first  — and only time — maybe Alex Jones was onto something after all.