Turkey Found With Full Belly Of Cicadas

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency / YouTube

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency shared a photo on Facebook of a turkey that had been harvested and it had a full belly of cicadas.

According to the caption on the post, the young male turkey was harvested in Jefferson County on the last day of the 2021 season. The photo just goes to show that the cicadas are on their way and will be a food source to many animals.

“There are a lot of animals that are going to benefit from that,” Barry Cross with the TWRA told FOX17.

These cicadas are part of a 17-year cycle where they stay underground for most of their lives then emerge to look for a mate. Once the entire brood emerges, those living near them will certainly hear them. They are as loud as a lawnmower and can gather in numbers so big that they look like a blanket of bugs laying over the landscape.

“It’s a total invasion,” FOX 17 reporter and Nashville native Harriet Wallace said. “If you’re not from here, you won’t believe it until you see it.”

According to the University of Tennessee’s Institute of Agriculture, after the cicadas shed their skin, they climb to the tops of trees and make loud noises all the way up.

The males climb up hoping to attract a female, while the females climb up to lay their eggs. The eggs later fall to the ground and tiny nymphs emerge from the eggs and burrow into the earth for 17 years. The process then repeats itself. Check out some cicadas in the video below.