Animals with iron-tipped teeth? You bet! My brother found an article, “Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth, new study finds.”
It got me thinking about a fascinating study I came across this summer, which revealed that female cicadas have metallic elements in the body part used to cut into branches to lay their eggs. This specialized appendage, known as the ovipositor, resembles a long sword that emerges from their mouth.
I’ve been planning to share a cicada round-up, highlighting all the interesting observations I made during their recent visit. The topic has resurfaced as folks in the Chicago suburbs are dealing with strange bug bites linked to cicadas. You wake up one morning with odd bites on your neck, arms, and back, and your first thought might be: spider bites!? But it turns out, it’s another bug.
If you’ve experienced a cicada invasion (the kind that occurs every 17 or 13 years), you’re familiar with the deafening noise and the overwhelming number of cicadas. Once the noise subsides, you might think they’re gone for good. But hold on—they’re not quite finished! All that noise was part of their mating process, with the goal of laying eggs in tree branches. Six to eight weeks after the noise fades, baby cicadas start falling from the trees.
Right now, in the Chicagoland area, those baby cicadas are beginning to fall. Be on the lookout! At first, I thought the bites were from these baby cicadas dropping onto me. However, the real culprits are oak mites. These tiny mites feast on cicada eggs, and with so many cicada eggs around, oak mites are thriving. Though they’re too small to see, their presence is certainly felt.
These oak mites typically live in Pin Oak trees. A single large Pin Oak can release up to 400,000 oak leaf itch mites per day. Yes, per day! Since the bites don’t hurt immediately, you might not realize you’ve been bitten until 10-16 hours later.
As August winds down, the food supply for oak mites dwindles, and so does the outbreak of bites. Last week, I counted three bites on my neck, one on my back, and one near my armpit—each itching far more than a mosquito bite.
This is just a small glimpse of what I plan to include in my upcoming cicada round-up!