When billions of Brood X 17-year cicadas emerge this spring in New Jersey, copperhead snakes may be waiting to gobble them up.
Don’t be surprised if you see copperhead snakes when the 17-year periodical cicadas emerge this spring in New Jersey. Experts say they’re an easy snack for the pit vipers. (Charlton McDaniel)
By Tom Davis, Patch Staff
NEW JERSEY — Humans might have mixed opinions about the 17-year periodical cicadas that will be emerging this spring. But copperheads will be happy to see them because the insects will provide an easy snack.
You read that correctly: copperheads, the venomous snakes found in many of the same states, including New Jersey, where billions of cicadas will emerge later this spring. So if you plan an outing to listen to the cacophony set up by these creatures, be careful no copperheads are slithering nearby.
Billions of the 17-year periodical cicadas — Brood X, or the Great Eastern Brood this year — are due to emerge in 15 U.S. states in May, give or take a few weeks.
The synchronized emergence of periodical cicadas, which have the longest life cycle of any known insect, still baffles scientists. But one evolutionary hypothesis is that the forced developmental delay was an adaptation to climate cooling during the ice ages.
There are two species of periodical cicadas — the 17-year cicadas, found in Northern states, and the 13-year cicadas, found in the South.
Related:
You Can Eat 17-Year Cicadas Emerging In New Jersey
Billions, Yes Billions, Of 17-Year Cicadas Will Emerge In 2021
Copperheads, a close relative of the cottonmouth or water moccasin, are found in Hunterdon, Mercer and Somerset Counties in the south to the New Jersey/New York border in the north and within the Palisades in Bergen County, according to the Conserve Wildlife.
The cicadas, meanwhile, are expected in the following New Jersey counties: Burlington, Hunterdon, Mercer, Salem.
Shy and reclusive copperheads come out of their figurative shells when the cicadas emerge. The snakes exploit the insect emergence as a smorgasbord requiring no more effort than simply showing up.
Cicadas are a “pretty easy snack” for the copperheads, Stephen Richter, an Eastern Kentucky University biology professor, told Tulsa World in 2019.
He and his students were working with the U.S. Forest Service in Daniel Boone National Forest at the time, looking at what the federal agency saw as a potential conflict and threat to campers: the convergence of copperheads and emerging cicadas.
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