Sex-Crazed Cicadas Are Set to Have Psychedelic Orgies Yet Again
A fungi containing psilocybin and bath salts could turn millions of the bugs into horny zombies.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgxyqw/sex-crazed-cicadas-psychedelic-orgies-fungus
Cicadas in the United States are infected by fungal amphetamines that will drive them yet again to engage in sex-crazed mating orgies. Massospora cicadina, a yellow-white fungus, grows in the insects’ bodies and boosts their sex drives to the point of mania. It also makes their genitals fall off.
This isn’t a new phenomenon; VICE News has covered the sex-crazed cicada summer for the past two years. But the 2021 iteration is upon us, and billions of Brood X cicadas are currently emerging, for the first time in 17 years, in 15 states across North America, where they’re expected to spend four to six weeks mating before all of them drop dead.
And Massospora – laced with psilocybin, the same chemical as psychedelic mushrooms, and capable of producing compounds of an amphetamine called cathinone, or “bath salts” – is making some cicadas want to mate more than usual.
The main takeaway, then, is that for the next month or so there are likely to be millions of castrated and sex-crazed zombie cicadas, high on amphetamines from a psychedelic fungus, flying around parts of the U.S. in desperate search of a mate. And, it bears repeating: you shouldn’t eat them for a buzz.