On a hot summer afternoon, cicadas can make a quiet neighborhood sound as though someone has switched on an enormous electrical machine in the trees. Their buzzing, whirring, rattling, and sometimes almost siren-like calls can dominate the outdoor soundscape, even when the insects themselves are nearly impossible to spot.
For such relatively small animals, cicadas are extraordinary noisemakers. During large periodical-cicada emergences, the combined chorus can become loud enough to compete with heavy traffic or power equipment. Smithsonian sources report that dense choruses can reach roughly 80 to 100 decibels, with some reports of periodical-cicada noise reaching 110 decibels or more at close range.
But cicadas are not simply making noise for the sake of filling summer afternoons. Their songs are an elaborate form of communication, produced by specialized structures unlike the sound-making equipment of crickets or grasshoppers.
And for male cicadas, all that noise has one overriding purpose: finding a mate.
🎵 Why Do Cicadas Make So Much Noise?
The loud summer cicada chorus is primarily a mating advertisement.
In most cicada species, the conspicuous calling songs are produced by males. They call to announce their presence and attract receptive females of the same species. Because individual cicadas may be scattered across trees and vegetation, being loud is useful: a powerful signal can travel farther than a quiet one.
Many males also gather and call together, creating a chorus. A large chorus amplifies the overall acoustic signal and can attract females from farther away. Smithsonian entomologists describe mate attraction as the principal reason for this collective noise.
The result is one of nature’s most unmistakable summer soundtracks.
🪘 Cicadas Don’t Sing With Their Mouths
It is natural to imagine a noisy insect rubbing body parts together or somehow vocalizing through its mouth.
Cicadas do neither.
Male cicadas possess specialized sound-producing structures called tymbals, located on the first abdominal segment. These are ribbed membranes positioned near the base of the abdomen, just behind the wings.
Strong muscles attached to the tymbals pull them inward, causing the stiff membrane to buckle.
When the muscle relaxes, the membrane snaps back into its original position.
Each movement produces a click.
One click would not sound much like the familiar cicada buzz. But a male can repeat this movement extraordinarily rapidly. Smithsonian entomologist Floyd Shockley has described tymbals buckling and snapping back hundreds of times per second, causing the individual clicks to merge into the continuous whirring or buzzing sound humans hear.
Think of repeatedly denting the side of a thin metal container and allowing it to pop back into shape—only much faster.
📢 The Cicada’s Body Acts Like an Amplifier
Making clicks is only part of the trick.
Male cicadas also have bodies well suited to amplifying those sounds.
The abdomen contains a large air-filled space that functions as a resonating chamber. Instead of letting each tiny tymbal click disappear immediately into the surrounding air, the cicada’s body helps amplify the vibration.
Smithsonian researchers compare the effect to the hollow body of a musical instrument, where a relatively small vibration is transformed into a much larger sound.
That helps explain the apparently impossible mismatch between the cicada’s size and its volume.
A creature only a few inches long can produce a call that carries through an entire stand of trees.
🎸 Cicadas and Crickets Make Sound Differently
Cicadas are often grouped together with crickets and katydids as the “singing insects” of summer, but they use very different equipment.
Crickets and katydids generally make their characteristic sounds through stridulation, rubbing specialized portions of their wings together.
A cicada’s primary calling mechanism instead depends on those abdominal tymbals.
This difference helps account for the distinctive character of their songs. Cricket chirps often sound clearly separated and rhythmic, while many cicada calls have a more mechanical quality: buzzing, whining, rattling, ticking, or pulsing.
Once you begin paying attention, a summer evening can reveal several different groups of insects performing simultaneously.
🔊 How Loud Can Cicadas Get?
One cicada can be surprisingly loud.
Thousands calling together can be astonishing.
Smithsonian Gardens has reported sound levels around 80 to 100 decibels in areas with particularly dense populations of periodical cicadas. Other Smithsonian material notes that massive periodical choruses can sometimes approach 110 to 120 decibels at close range, although actual measurements depend heavily on distance, species, cicada density, surroundings, and measurement conditions.
That does not mean every cicada chorus in your backyard reaches jackhammer intensity.
Annual cicadas scattered around a neighborhood may produce a loud but much less overwhelming background sound. The truly extraordinary noise levels are associated particularly with enormous synchronized emergences in which huge numbers of males call at the same time.
What sounds like one enormous insect may actually be hundreds or thousands of individual singers.
🐜 Why Do Male Cicadas Sing Together?
Calling in groups creates a stronger signal.
A lone male has only his own tiny sound-producing apparatus. Hundreds of nearby males can create a chorus capable of carrying over a much larger area.
For periodical cicadas in particular, chorusing is closely connected with courtship behavior. Males gather, call, move, and respond to signals as they search for females.
There may also be secondary benefits to being part of an enormous noisy aggregation. A dense cicada emergence can overwhelm predators simply through sheer abundance, and an intense chorus may discourage some predators or make isolating an individual caller more difficult.
But scientists studying the calls emphasize that the central function is reproduction.
The chorus is essentially a gigantic advertisement.
💕 Do Female Cicadas Sing?
Female cicadas generally do not possess the sound-producing tymbals males use for their loud calling songs.
That does not mean courtship is a one-sided conversation.
Females of periodical cicadas in the genus Magicicada can respond to male calls with precisely timed wing flicks. The rapid movement produces a small sound—anything from a rustle to a distinct snap—that signals a receptive female.
Timing is crucial.
Different Magicicada species use different call patterns, and females respond at the appropriate point in the call of their own species. A male detecting the response may change his calling behavior and move toward her.
Courtship can therefore become a genuine acoustic exchange: the male calls, the female flicks her wings, and the pair gradually locate one another.
UConn researchers have demonstrated how important the timing can be by imitating female wing flicks and prompting male periodical cicadas to respond.
🎼 Different Cicadas Have Different Songs
There is no single universal “cicada sound.”
Different species produce dramatically different calls.
Some create long electric buzzes. Others produce rhythmic pulses, rattles, whistles, clicks, rising whines, or phrases that almost sound like mechanical machinery.
Those distinctions are biologically important.
Cicada songs are often highly species-specific, which allows females to distinguish males of their own species even when several kinds of cicadas are calling in the same area. UConn’s periodical-cicada researchers note that sound is often one of the best ways to identify cicada species in the field.
To humans, a group of trees may initially sound like one continuous wall of noise. With practice, it is possible to begin separating individual rhythms and pitches and realize that several different songs are overlapping.
The summer chorus suddenly becomes much more complicated.
🧬 A Song Can Prevent the Wrong Cicadas From Mating
Species-specific songs serve another important purpose: reproductive recognition.
Closely related cicada species may emerge in the same area at the same time. If appearance alone were the primary signal, finding the correct mate could become confusing.
Sound helps solve the problem.
Male calling patterns differ in characteristic ways, and females can respond preferentially to the appropriate species-specific signal. In Magicicada, even the timing of female wing flicks relative to male calls varies among species.
That makes cicada music more than an attention-getting device.
It is part of an identification system.
What sounds like a repetitive buzz to us can contain information another cicada immediately recognizes.
👂 Can Cicadas Hear Their Own Songs?
Yes. Cicadas have hearing organs known as tympana, located on the abdomen.
These are distinct from the male’s sound-producing tymbals. The similar terminology can be confusing: tymbals make the calling sound; tympana receive sound.
Both male and female periodical cicadas possess auditory organs and can detect the acoustic signals involved in communication.
For males, producing extremely intense sound close to their own hearing system creates an obvious challenge. Cicada anatomy includes adaptations associated with reducing the effect of self-produced sound while calling.
The combination of specialized sound production, amplification, and hearing makes the cicada a remarkably sophisticated acoustic animal.
☀️ Why Do Cicadas Seem Loudest on Hot Days?
Cicada activity is strongly influenced by environmental conditions.
Many familiar annual cicadas become especially conspicuous during warm summer weather, and different species have preferred times and conditions for calling.
Some species call mainly during bright daylight. Others become active later in the afternoon or toward dusk.
This is another reason it is risky to say that “cicadas sing during the day” as though every species follows the same schedule. The cicada family contains thousands of species distributed across much of the world, and their behavior varies considerably.
Still, in much of North America, the rising mechanical buzz heard on a hot afternoon is one of the most characteristic signs that summer is well underway.
🗓️ Annual Cicadas vs. Periodical Cicadas
Not every cicada follows the famous 13- or 17-year schedule.
The insects commonly called annual cicadas appear every summer because their underground generations overlap. An individual annual cicada may actually spend several years developing underground, but members of the population mature in different years, allowing adults to appear annually.
Periodical cicadas are different.
Species in the genus Magicicada spend either 13 or 17 years underground and then emerge in enormous synchronized groups known as broods.
When a major brood appears, millions of cicadas may occupy a relatively small geographical area.
That synchronization explains why a periodical emergence can become so spectacularly noisy. Instead of scattered adults calling from various trees, extraordinary numbers of males may all be singing within the same few weeks.
🌳 What Are Cicadas Doing Underground All Those Years?
Most of a cicada’s life happens where we cannot see it.
After hatching, the young cicada—called a nymph—enters the soil and spends its developmental period underground.
Cicada nymphs feed primarily on fluids associated with plant roots. They molt through several immature stages as they grow.
Eventually, the mature nymph tunnels toward the surface, climbs a tree trunk, plant, fence post, or other vertical structure, and undergoes its final molt.
The familiar empty shell left clinging to bark is the old nymphal exoskeleton.
The newly emerged adult gradually hardens, its wings expand, and the brief aboveground reproductive phase begins.
For periodical species, that adult life represents only a tiny fraction of an existence dominated by years beneath the soil.
🟤 Why Are Empty Cicada Shells Everywhere?
Those brittle brown shells attached to trees are called exuviae.
They are not dead cicadas.
When a mature nymph emerges from the ground, it climbs to a suitable surface and splits its outer exoskeleton. The soft adult gradually pulls itself free.
At first, the new cicada can look remarkably pale and delicate. Its wings expand and its new external skeleton hardens.
The abandoned nymphal skin remains attached to the tree long afterward, perfectly preserving the shape of legs, claws, abdomen, and even the opening through which the adult emerged.
Finding those shells is one of the easiest ways to confirm that cicadas are emerging nearby—even before the chorus reaches full volume.
🪽 Why Don’t Cicadas Stay Above Ground Longer?
The adult stage is primarily devoted to reproduction.
Once mature, males call and search for females. After mating, females use an ovipositor to make small slits in suitable twigs and lay their eggs.
The eggs hatch later, and tiny nymphs fall to the ground and enter the soil.
The cycle begins again.
Adult cicadas generally live for only a matter of weeks rather than years. That contrast is especially striking in 17-year periodical cicadas: an insect can spend well over a decade developing underground only to experience a short adult season in the trees.
From the cicada’s perspective, however, those weeks contain the biological purpose of the entire emergence.
🐦 Why Don’t Predators Eat All the Periodical Cicadas?
Predators certainly eat them.
Birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and other animals can take advantage of an enormous cicada emergence.
Periodical cicadas survive partly through a strategy known as predator satiation.
So many emerge in the same area at roughly the same time that predators simply cannot consume them all. Individual cicadas have relatively little ability to defend themselves, but the population overwhelms the predators’ capacity to eat it.
Millions survive long enough to mate and reproduce despite enormous numbers being consumed.
The deafening chorus accompanies this huge biological event, but the reproductive success of periodical cicadas depends more on overwhelming predators through numbers than on frightening them away with sound.
🦅 Does the Noise Scare Predators Away?
Possibly in some circumstances, but predator deterrence should not be treated as the main explanation for cicada song.
Smithsonian entomologist Floyd Shockley has noted that a very loud chorus may discourage some birds, but describes that effect as secondary. The principal purpose of chorusing is attracting females.
This is an important distinction because animal behaviors can have more than one consequence without every consequence being the reason the behavior evolved.
The chorus may affect predators.
It may dominate the acoustic environment.
It may drive humans inside to close the windows.
But from the male cicada’s perspective, the central audience is female cicadas.
🐕 Can Cicadas Hurt People or Pets?
Cicadas may look formidable, particularly when hundreds are flying clumsily around a yard, but they are not built to attack people.
Periodical cicadas do not sting, and their mouthparts are specialized for feeding on plant fluids rather than biting humans in the way mosquitoes or biting flies do. UConn’s cicada researchers note that they are not poisonous and are not known for transmitting disease to people.
A male being handled may produce a startling defensive buzz.
Pets present a slightly different issue. Dogs and other animals sometimes eat cicadas simply because there are so many available. Consuming one or two may not be a problem for many animals, but eating large numbers can cause digestive trouble or present other risks. A veterinarian is the appropriate source of advice if a pet has eaten many insects or develops symptoms.
For most people, cicadas are much noisier than they are dangerous.
🌱 Do Cicadas Damage Trees?
Adult cicadas are not leaf-chewing pests that strip trees bare.
Female periodical cicadas can cause some damage when they cut small slits into twigs to lay eggs. On mature healthy trees, this is often more cosmetic than catastrophic, although small branch tips can die and break off in a process known as “flagging.”
Young trees are more vulnerable because they have fewer branches to lose.
During a major periodical emergence, people planting very young trees in an affected area may benefit from following local Extension recommendations about timing or physical protection.
Broad insecticide spraying is generally neither necessary nor desirable simply because adult cicadas are present.
Their enormous numbers can make them seem like a destructive invasion, but they are a natural part of the ecosystem.
🌎 Cicadas Are Found Far Beyond North America
The spectacular 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas are a North American phenomenon, but cicadas themselves are found across much of the world.
Thousands of species inhabit tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions.
Their sounds have become part of the seasonal identity of landscapes from the American Midwest to Mediterranean countries, East and Southeast Asia, Australia, Africa, and beyond.
Different species produce different songs, follow different seasonal cycles, and occupy different habitats.
Humans have noticed them for thousands of years as well.
Cicadas appear in art, poetry, folklore, music, and symbolism across numerous cultures. Smithsonian collections include extensive examples from Chinese art, where cicadas historically carried associations with rebirth and immortality.
Long before scientists understood tymbals and acoustic signaling, people were already listening.
🎧 Can Loud Cicadas Damage Your Hearing?
The answer depends on how loud the chorus is, how close you are, and how long the exposure lasts.
Extremely dense periodical-cicada choruses can produce sound levels high enough that prolonged close exposure may become uncomfortable. Smithsonian Gardens has compared dense choruses with noisy urban traffic or power tools and points out that occupational hearing guidance treats prolonged exposure to high sound levels seriously.
For most people casually walking through a neighborhood with ordinary annual cicadas, this is unlikely to resemble working beside industrial machinery for an entire shift.
During an exceptional mass emergence, however, moving away from an intensely loud cluster can be sensible if the sound becomes uncomfortable. People who must remain near very loud choruses for long periods may choose hearing protection.
The volume is another reminder of how extraordinary the insect’s sound-producing system really is.
🔍 Why Can You Hear Cicadas but Never Find Them?
Cicadas are excellent at disappearing into a tree canopy.
Their bodies may blend surprisingly well with bark and leaves, and sound localization becomes difficult when dozens of insects are calling at once.
A cicada that seems to be directly above you may actually be farther away.
If you want to spot one, avoid staring randomly into the highest branches. Look along tree trunks, larger branches, and leaf edges. Watching for movement can be easier than searching for the insect’s outline.
Empty nymphal shells near the base of a tree can also tell you where adults recently emerged.
And sometimes the easiest option is simply to stop trying to find the singer and listen.
🎶 Summer’s Living Soundtrack
The next time a cicada starts screaming from a tree outside the window, it helps to know what is actually happening.
A male is rapidly flexing specialized ribbed membranes in his abdomen. Each tymbal buckles and snaps back, producing clicks so quickly that they merge into a buzz. His hollow abdomen amplifies the result. Other males may join him, transforming individual calls into a chorus that carries through the neighborhood.
Somewhere within hearing range, a female cicada may be listening for exactly the right pattern.
To us, it is the sound of summer.
To the cicadas, it is communication, competition, courtship, and the continuation of a life cycle that may have spent years unfolding silently beneath our feet.
That makes the relentless afternoon drone much more than background noise. It is one of nature’s loudest love songs.
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