Secret Life of Ciciada
In Litochoro and elsewhere
MARCH 24, 2021 | LITOCHORO | 14 MIN
MARCH 24, 2021 | LITOCHORO | 12 MIN
Secret Life of Ciciada
In Litochoro and elsewhere
It was in the middle of hot summer, the peak of the holiday season. I stood in front of the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion in Crete, among the crowd of tourists. I was delighted by amazing sun of July, the lush nature on the square around and the aesthetic madness of the interior of King Minos’s palace that was about to follow soon. It was my first time in Greece, everything was new, interesting and exciting. Only this loud sawing, as if some metal against metal, did not match with the sublimity of the moment.
It was in the middle of hot summer, the peak of the holiday season. I stood in front of the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion in Crete, among the crowd of tourists. I was delighted by amazing sun of July, the lush nature on the square around and the aesthetic madness of the interior of King Minos’s palace that was about to follow soon. It was my first time in Greece, everything was new, interesting and exciting. Only this loud sawing, as if some metal against metal, did not match with the sublimity of the moment.
Is this another protracted renovation and permanent reconstruction? A certain regularity of the phrase and rhythm of sawing, however, raised suspicions that even in the country of southern freedom and an innate sense of the heximeter, construction workers may not have so much fantasy. After some time, I realized that “sawing” does not come from the machine. It’s a cicada – a small inconspicuous insect, a distant cousin of the grasshopper.
After that, I heard (rarely saw) cicadas in many places in Crete, mainland Greece and in many other parts of the Mediterranean. Equally loud and slightly muted, playing in the morning, at noon and before evening; singing solo, in various chamber ensembles and in huge choirs of thousands of vocalists. Or rather violinists or cellists, because the instrument of the cicada is specially transformed parts of the outer skeleton, stretch and released, while the whole body is a soundboard.
The sound of cicadas is ubiquitous on the Inner Sea, but was a complete surprise to me. In guidebooks they write about dolphins in Knossos, theater in Epidaurus or frescoes of the church of Panagia Kontariotissa near Katerini; even about the weather on Olympus and the ferries running between Amorgos and Astypalaia. However, no one warned me about the madness of the cicadas!
You can prepare for each trip, read literature, ask friends, view maps. But, everything cannot be predicted. Even more, each journey carries a tremendous amount of completely unexpected and surprising experiences, and these are often the most exciting and lasting.
masterpiece of wings
And the cicadas do not cease to fascinate me. They spend many years in the larval stage underground, buried at a depth of 30 to 250 cm. At the end of May, they come to the surface as a nymphs, shed their skins, which can hang on the tree for a long time and start to sing. Adults live only a few weeks, feeding mainly on plant juices. They have transparent, veined wings, but they fly quite awkwardly. However, these wings are real masterpieces of biotechnology. Their surface is super hydrophobic, that is, built of very small conical elements, “repelling” the water that flows down the wings. Dew condenses on their surface, so the cicadas wash their movement apparatus even if there is no rain.
But that’s not all: the conical nano-spikes from which the wings are made of, also have the property, that the bacteria that settle on them are mechanically torn to shreds. Cicada wings are the only biomaterial known to us, that destroys bacteria! Is it any wonder then, that in ancient times the cicada was a symbol of reviving life, eternal youth and immortality?
madness of singing
Above all, however, cicada is made of singing. Ok, maybe this music is nice mostly for the ear of a female of the partner who makes these sounds, but it is certainly difficult to refuse him perseverance and the power of sound. I won’t undertake to describe the details of the construction of the cicada musical instrument. I’ll just say – it’s complicated. To this, the cicada approaches the phrase as a whole. Has an apparatus for producing sounds, then a kind of resonance box to strengthen it (half of the male’s body is a resonance box), finally uses the surfaces on which he sits and the relative positioning of his body, for modulation and additional melody enhancement. Like any real musician, the cicada can also listen; has a special apparatus for receiving sounds (both male and his partner), however the male turns it off when he plays. And it’s hardly surprising as the sound level he can produce reaches 120 dB, which would effectively destroy not only his own hearing aid, but also the adult man hearing organ, if he wanted to listen to a concert at a very short distance.
Plato on cicadas
I feel a certain spiritual kinship with the cicada. First of all, love of music; but also a penchant for high temperatures. The value from which my noisy artist starts to feel good is 29º C. Then also his instrument is the most effective and the music sounds really powerful. This is why cicadas can be heard best on hot days, in the afternoon, hot hours. Not only that, for better efficiency, cicadas can raise their body temperature by 4-5º C, and some species by up to 20º C above environment temperature, which in heat-variable animals is a real feat!
Cicada is made of singing and was born from singing. The ancient Greeks knew at least two myths about the origin of the cicadas. The first cites Plato in Phaedrus – one of his most beautiful and mysterious dialogues. In Benjamin Jowett’s translation, the fragment reads as follows (note that Jowett calls the cicada a grasshopper, what itself calls out to heaven for vengeance, but let’s draw a veil of silence at this point):
grasshoppers [...] are said to have been human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died.
So we have madness of singing to the grave. And this is human madness, only secondarily transferred to the animal kingdom. As Muses, moved by such devotion for their invention, turned avid singers into cicadas so that they could indulge in their passion without interruption. And indeed, there is something amazing about the way cicadas exist. First, many years underground in total darkness. Then, an amazing, magical transformation (see the video below), a body built like a musical instrument and four weeks of almost continuous singing in the blinding midday sun – the cicadas play several hours a day, eating almost nothing!
But what exactly is all this for? It is quite obvious to note that the cicada singing is in essence, an extreme ecstatic hymn of love. The male is after all playing a flirtatious song. Here we come to the second myth about the origin of insect-musicians.
Homeric hymn on cicadas
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite from the 6th century BC we find the story of a young man named Tithonus, who was a rapsod (singer, poet) and lover of Eos – the goddess of dawn. In thanks for his love, the goddess offered him immortality. However, nothing is perfect (especially in the world of Homeric myths). Tithonus was immortal, but he was not forever young. He was getting older, he was shrinking, he was getting smaller and smaller, and finally Eos turned him into a cicada, so that she could at least hear the voice of her beloved. So love as a salvation? Or rather salvation as proof of love in spite of everything. It must be remembered that love between god and mortal was something rare and dangerous in the Homeric world, because it broke the natural, always established order of things. In the triad, the gods-humans-animals the cicadas had a unique position, being in fact each of these entities in part.
Finally, a linguistic remark. In many languages, the word cicada is a classic sonic name trying to convey the characteristic song of a tireless insect. We have cicada in English, zikade in German, cigale in French and tzitzika in Greek [Τζίτζικα]. In the ancient Greek language of Homer, however, the cicada is tettix [τέττιξ]. So, did the ancient Greeks hear a little differently? Or maybe it was the divine insects that changed the way of playing?
In Litochoro, the cicadas have a special liking for the path from Lakkos to Lambada, along the Enipeas stream. On summer days the whole valley is filling with their singing, I am grateful to them that they are not like their American cousins – who appear once in 17 years – and at the beginning of June they will come out of the ground, spread their wings, dry them in the sun and start playing. I can not wait…
A beautiful movie about the transformation of a cicada on Vimeo. Samuel Orr “Return of the Cicadas”
Lost in Translation.
Where are those cicadas?
Appendix
cicadas and a metaphor of love
However, it seems that the cicadas are also present in Phaedrus at a much deeper level, as if at the root of Plato’s imagination, at the level of depicting the most important metaphors. Phaedrus is a dialogue about love and the soul. In this order, because for Plato the highest level of love is spiritual love. At the same time, the soul, which thanks to feeling ascends to a higher level, is winged. Soul wings play an important role in many dialogues, but they are particularly important in Phaedrus. And these wings are always described as cicadas wings! But even more than that. The basic transformation of the soul under the influence of love is describe as the transformation of the cicada from the larva to the adult form. With many details, showing careful observation and knowledge of things that astonishes even modern entomologists. Socrates describes to Phaedrus what happens to the soul and it looks like he describes the details of the emergence of the cicada from the old shell to the form of a music virtuoso. With key moments: heart palpitations, fluid secretion (one entomologists state that “the whole [cicadas] body temporarily becomes a large secreting gland”), cracking the outer shell, developing wings, and even drying them in the sun. You can read the 31 or 36 chapter of Phaedrus, or you can look at the beautiful video above. The similarity of contemporary film frames and Plato’s descriptions is striking!
Cretan update, August 1, 2026
cicadas in my house
I found the transparent outer shell of a metamorphosed cicada this morning on my doorstep in Crete. Almost exactly a year ago, two similar, no longer needed shells were hanging on my front doorframe. These cicadas must have emerged from the ground during the night, climbed onto the wooden doorframe, undergone the entire metamorphosis process, unfurled and dried their wings in the sun, and flown off into the branches of real trees, of which there are plenty nearby. But the entrance to my house is paved entirely with flat stones with concrete filling all the gaps, so it’s impossible to “emerge from the ground” right next to my door. These cicadas could only have emerged from real soil, which is at least 5 meters away, climbed a 20 cm high step along the way, to finally reach their chosen pupation site. Okay, my doorframe is indeed made of raw wood, but since it’s painted blue, it’s hard to mistake it for a real tree. Whatever the case, I feel honored that my favorite summer singers are staying in my close neighborhood.
cicadas everywhere
Since moving to Crete, my opportunities to observe cicadas have increased immeasurably. In Litochoro, the noisy insects appear in June and fall silent by the end of August. In Crete, their season usually begins in May and lasts at least until the end of October, and individual concerts can be heard on the island’s southern coast even in November or early December. Cicadas are truly ubiquitous in Crete; not only can they be heard constantly (during the day, of course – they don’t sing at night), but they are also easily visible. Yesterday, in the city park in Nea Chora, I saw five individuals on the trunk of a single plane tree. At the end of last season, I counted 17 on a magnolia bush in my yard. And on our Malaxa running paths, among the olive trees, there are so many of them that they bang and scream at every runner who happens to be there.
The cicadas in my yard play in waves; I can hear them now as I write these words. But not all the time, because they take a break every few minutes, all together, as if their concerts were synchronized, and real music is best heard in a chorus. It seems that in the kingdom of these musical insects, they don’t like soloists.
noisy neighbors
My cicadas are indeed noisy. The sound intensity I measured in my yard easily reaches 75 to 80 decibels. This is also music with extremely high frequencies. The measuring device shows values of 5200-5300 Hz, while the vast majority of acoustic music rarely reaches 1000 Hz, mostly remaining in the 250-500 Hz range. Apparently, the cicadas know how to distinguish themselves in this area as well.
What I’m most pleased about is that, unlike their concerts, the cicada life cycle in Crete is not synchronized. The first emerge from the ground at the end of May, but because they only live for five weeks, successive waves of vibrant artists emerge gradually throughout the summer, keeping their music alive until November.
So… they will stay with us for several more months.
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