ith their serenaders. Scientists are beginning to suspect that a very loud noise, produced by a giant chorus of male cicadas, is necessary for successful mating. Accordingly, small groups of cicadas, which cannot produce enough noise, tend not to mate and do not produce a new generation. The human reactions to cicada music range from fascinated disbelief to annoyance to panic. The Guiness Book of World Records lists male cicadas as the world's loudest insects maintaining that their abdominal drums vibrate at a rate of 7,400 pulses per minute. The noise produced has been described by the United States Department of Agriculture as sounding something like "Tsh-ee-EEEE-e-ou!" Motorists driving through a town populated with lovesick cicadas may stop their cars and open the hood to find out what is wrong with the engine. People who sleep during the day-the time when cicadas sing-often have to resort to earplugs. Finally, most people realize that there is no remedy other than to put up with this sound for five or six weeks. After all, it only occurs in a particular area once every seventeen years. All in all, the cicada is a creature little understood by most humans. Throughout the centuries it has been misnamed or mistakenly feared. Legend has attributed terrible powers to it. The cicada has been called everything from a plague to an omen of war to a backyard nuisance. Perhaps, in years to come, as scientists discover more about this infrequent visitor, it will lose some of its mystery. Only then, in the human mind, will it join the familiar ranks of such warm-weather insects as the mosquito and the butterfly....
