Tag: science

I Love Cicadas. Here Is Why.

I remember my long-ago childhood in Rogers Park. I’d walk along Farwell, or Greenview, or Pratt Avenues after dinner. My friends and I would stop in a neighborhood park in the early evening as the sunlight faded. We would catch grasshoppers and put them in glass jars with holes punched in the lids. We would chase Monarch butterflies as The Butterfly of Love played on someone’s transistor radio. And we watched as hundreds of fireflies illuminated the darkness.

Most years since then have been pretty uneventful on the insect front. But this year is a special one. Like everyone celebrating a 68th birthday in 2024, I was born in 1956. That year, like 2024, was a 17-year cycle cicada year. And I am as thrilled as a newly hatching nymph in black dirt about my fifth time crossing flight paths with this septendecimal brood.

I know most people can’t stand the little buggers. My family is no exception. They hate the noise; they hate the beady red eyes; they hate the fluttering creatures landing in their hair. Our neighborhood is filled with spasmodic dance moves as both kids and adults do their best to shake them off.

But while the haters hate, hate, hate, I love the little buggers. How can you not respect creatures with such perfectly tuned bodies that in their somnambulant larval state they can accurately tick off 17 years? And how can you not feel empathy for critters whose entire conscious life is limited to a few weeks?

Are they loud? Sure they are. When one became attached to Cooper’s leash and snuck inside our house, its clacking was astonishingly raucous. But the drone of thousands high up in the trees is calming, almost hypnotic. As I walk through the neighborhood, I find the sound a pleasant backdrop to the words of the novel I am listening to through my headphones. The rumblings of school buses and garbage trucks are much more distracting than the insect’s overhead buzz.

I don’t mind when the rapidly beating wings brush against my arms or legs. It’s fine if the creatures settle onto my shirt for a moment. They won’t bite, sting, or spit on me. They will soon flutter away as they choose a mate from among their millions of compatriots. Speeddating at its finest!

I will be 84 the next time this brood of cicadas reappears. Maybe I enjoy them because they remind me of the many years I still have before I greet them again. And maybe, just maybe, they remind me of those simpler days of my youth, when grasshoppers and butterflies were enough to light my way home.

The Neanderthal In Me–Why I Am An Early Riser

Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man—The Kinks

I have always been a morning person, an early riser. Before retirement (is that really already a year ago?) I started the day bright and eager at the sound of my 5 a.m. alarm. I’d launch down the tollway well before the morning traffic rush, do a quick walk-through of the lab, and be finished reviewing a tray or three of slides before my associates even got to their microscopes.

Things haven’t changed much in the past year. Although I rarely turn on my alarm clock, I still rise while the house is dark and Barb and our dog Cooper sleep. My only wakeful companion is the kitten. By the time anyone else joins me I have had my morning workout, showered, shaved, fed the cat, downed my gluten-free breakfast, and successfully (hopefully) completed the Wordle, Connections, and Waffle daily puzzles. I am hyped up and ready for morning pickleball or a long dog walk.

I’ve always considered that the morning energy was just “my nature.” I have never given a thought to why I might be that way. And then this morning, I discovered an article in my early morning news feed that explains it all. According to an article in the science section of The Guardian, I am part Neanderthal!

For those of you not up to date on your anthropology, the Neanderthals were a primitive species sort-of related to homo sapiens (the current us.) Probably originating in Africa, the Neanderthal ancestors migrated to Europe and Asia before homo sapiens but interbred with them when the sapiens eventually followed a similar migration pattern. The Neanderthals died out, the homo sapiens flourished.

What does that have to do with me? Scientists at the University of California San Francisco explain that for the Neanderthals to survive the relatively shorter days in Europe, early morning wakefulness was a useful trait and part of their genetic makeup. And today, people with certain Neanderthal genes in their DNA (remember there was interbreeding between the two species) have “an increased propensity to be a morning person.” There was no mention in the article of whether we morning people also inherited shorter arms and legs and big foreheads from our prehistoric forebearers.

So it’s true, I have a bit of the caveman in me. I’d like to write more about it, but I need to start the grill for the barbecue we are having with our neighbors Fred and Barney and their wives Wilma and Betty. It’s a good thing the brontosaurus burgers were on sale at the local Jewel, that Fred can eat a ton.

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