Cicadas Are Back After 17 Years, But Won't Hit Animal Crossing Until July

If you've played any of the Animal Crossing games before New Horizons, then you're no stranger to the mystical buzzing of the cicada. The loud summer bugs are a staple of the franchise and are finally returning to the real world after 17 years of underground development. They'll start to cover trees across Eastern North America and elsewhere in the coming weeks.

While real-world cicadas will start emerging throughout May, we won't see them in Animal Crossing until the first day of July when the Brown, Giant, and Robust Cicadas start sucking the fluid from every tree between town hall and the museum. Cicadas show up during the summer in the Northern Hemisphere and next year in early January for people playing in the Southern Hemisphere. You can find complete details about how to catch every type of cicada in our bug catching guide.

There isn't a 13 or 17 year cycle with the insects within Animal Crossing, but there has been an eight-year gap between Animal Crossing: New Leaf and New Horizons.

Cicadas, an insect with over 3,000 species worldwide, generally spend years underground when young before emerging for a few weeks or months of adulthood. According to experts, the unique lifecycle was developed to avoid predators. This makes the emergence of each brood, a group of young born at the same time, quite the newsworthy event.

17 year cicadas are expected in greater numbers in North Carolina, southwestern Virginia, and southeastern West Virginia. You'll definitely hear their summer song if you're in one of those areas, everyone else can turn to their Animal Crossing villages if they want to enjoy the friendly buzzing without having to go outside.