Annual Cicada

Subject: annual cicada
Location: southern ontario, canada
September 1, 2014 12:23 pm
I have used your site a number of times to identify different bugs I’ve found. As I came across it again while looking for details about an annual cicada I recently got some photos of, I thought I might see if you would like some of those photos.
They are yours to use on your site if you’d like.
Thanks for the info,
Jeff Epp

Hi Jeff,
Your images are beautiful.  This does not look like one of the Cicadas in the genus Tibicen, which are quite common, so we will try to provide a genus at a later point.  You should handle Cicadas with caution.  We tried to locate a comment we received from a reader once who was handling a Cicada when the Cicada plunged its piercing proboscis into the person’s finger.  It was allegedly quite painful.  We just located the comment which states:  “A few years ago, while working in a state park nature center in Indiana, a young (6 years old) entomologist brought his latest aquisition, a cicada, to show me. I picked it up and let it crawl on my thumb. When I was ready to give it back, the thing wouldn’t let go, and decided to press that sucking mouth part into my thumb. It was pretty painful. They can DEFINATELY bite (or perhaps STAB is a more appropriate term).”