So much of travel is experiencing news tastes and smells. Coming soon to a taqueria near you in the United States, but only on a limited basis: cicada tacos.
Cicada Tacos Available After 17-Year Wait
Cicadas are fascinating. In North America, these harmless insects spend most of their lives underground, emerging every 17 years or so to mate. 2021 is the year of the cicada, as millions have awoken and males can now be heard “singing” as they look to attract females to reproduce.
Ah, summertime!
Chefs have discovered that these little insects are quite tasty, and are crafting them in a number of dishes, including tacos:
These special, limited-time-only sauteed cicada tacos were 17 years in the making 🌮 pic.twitter.com/T5T9dbsjdc
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 21, 2021
As a lover of shrimp tacos, I’m intrigued…
Of course not everyone is happy:
Humans suck wide. ‘Hey! This living thing has been hanging around for 17 years…let’s eat the bastard!’ And that @Reuters seems to think that idea is just peachy is extremely irritating. So tired of humans destroying everything.
— DrAnnInStPaul-SuckItWSJ 🤓🐈🐈🤓👑👨🏻🎸🎹🥁🎸🎤 (@libsechumanist) May 21, 2021
beyond impossible
— Brandon Christopher (@Brandon72433129) May 21, 2021
— Heather 📚 (@LadyElinorD) May 21, 2021
But as enter the weekend, I know what kind of tacos I will be looking for this weekend…
Will you be looking for cicada tacos this weekend?
I’m confused by the indignation by the “Humans suck wide” tweet by Dr.AnnInStPaul.
As far as I know, this particular cicada species is:
1. Not endangered and have no populations under significant threat
2. Does not perform any significant ecological service that the local ecosystem critically relies on
3. As small invertebrates, the “animal rights” implication of eating them seems to fall well below the concern of most other farmed animals
Especially if this temporarily reduces the consumption of something like beef, it seems like a win-win to me.
If anything, this tweet smacks of the hypocrisy of not being able to enjoy meat that looks too much like an animal, or the arbitrary definition between “animals raised for food” and “animals that are too cute to eat.”
No thanks. I’ll leave the cicadas for my cat to enjoy as an appetizer with his rabbit tartare.
Just to clarify, you want to eat an insect that has come out after 17 years to have sex, lay eggs, and die? Dude, let them have some fun at least. It’s like Vegas in the insect world so just grab a cocktail and watch the show.
The singing of cicadas is a joy; they provide food for birds and other wildlife. There is no need to be eating them. I’ll be having a tempeh-based taco.
Dreadful people want to eat all living creatures until everything is extinct.
Yeah, I totally don’t get the moral outrage over eating cicadas. The whole survival strategy of the cicadidae species is centered upon over-reproduction to the point where there are too many to eat for predators to threaten their survival as a species. And anyone who’s ever been around for a brood emergence knows that it works .. well.
Now, as for whether or not I would eat one … well, just because one can do a thing does not mean that one should. 😉