Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, a team of researchers has finally solved a mystery that has persisted for decades: why do cicadas build small “erect towers” out of clay, and what happens when you put a condom on one? The answers are related, it turns out.
A collection of non-protected cicada towers. (Andreas Kay/flickr)
The architect cicada Guyalna chlorogena spends the final stage of its underground development constructing a rigid mud structure that “rises several inches” above the forest floor. Scientists have “long” debated whether these towers serve a functional purpose or are simply the insect equivalent of leaving a sock on the doorknob. A new study published by a team from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro confirms the towers are, in fact, critical survival infrastructure. Although the methods they used to prove it will require you to keep a straight face while you read the phrase “latex condom seal” in a purely academic context, of course.
The research “emerged” from a training program run by the Serrapilheira Institute near “Manaus” (bonus points if your brain visually “inserted” an extra n in Manaus). Researchers placed “bait” on top of the towers and on the ground beside them, then counted how many ants showed up at each location. The towers drew eight times fewer ants than the surrounding ground, which suggests that the “erect structures” provide meaningful “protection” during the one moment in a cicada’s life when it’s most exposed and vulnerable. Doctoral student Marina Méga had already noticed the ant activity during preliminary fieldwork, because apparently, when you spend enough time staring at small “rigid things” in the jungle, you start to notice other patterns.
The airflow experiment is where the methodology gets memorable. To test whether the towers regulate breathing for the insects still underground, the team sealed the structures using latex condoms stretched over the tops and secured at the base with plastic film. Forty condoms made it into the field kit. The paper does not specify the brand, which feels like a missed sponsorship opportunity, though one imagines the grant application was already raising enough questions.
Once sealed, the towers could no longer exchange air through the porous clay walls, creating what researchers described as respiratory stress for the nymphs below. This is the scientific term for what happens when you can’t breathe because someone put a condom on your house. When the seals were removed the next day, the insects rebuilt their towers at different rates depending on the original size of the structure. Larger towers recovered faster, while smaller ones lagged behind. The researchers noted that this differential response could reflect structural advantages in bigger towers, though they were careful not to draw broader conclusions about the relationship between size and performance. Probably wise.
What makes this study important beyond its inherent comedy is that the authors introduced the concept of “the extended phenotype”. In biological terms, this means the tower is functionally part of the cicada’s body, expressed through construction rather than genetics. The “mud tower” is biology, not architecture. It’s the cicada equivalent of a load-bearing “organ” that happens to exist outside the organism. The researchers were quite serious about this distinction, which is admirable given that they arrived at it by putting prophylactics on dirt columns.
Starts looking quite painful by Day 2. (Marina Mega et al)
Earlier studies had already established that each tower houses a single occupant and that the insects rebuild nightly, adjusting openings based on environmental conditions. Wet clay can clog the tiny air passages, so the cicadas “open the tops” when “ventilation is needed”. Which is both an elegant adaptation and an unfortunately vivid metaphor that this article has been trying not to make for several paragraphs now.
The moment of greatest danger comes when the nymph finally has to leave the soil, climb the tower, and “emerge” as an adult. During those hours, the cicada is “fully exposed”, soft-bodied, and unable to retreat. The tower’s height lifts it above the ground-level ant patrols that would otherwise turn metamorphosis into a buffet. So the structure serves double duty: it helps the cicada breathe while it’s underground, and it helps the cicada not die while it’s “coming out.” Protection and ventilation, synchronized to the exact moment the insect needs both. It’s the most impressive thing anyone has ever built out of mud and then had a condom stretched over it for science.
The fieldwork itself deserves a quiet nod. This wasn’t a lavishly funded laboratory campaign. It grew out of a training course in central Amazonia, where humid heat, limited gear, and long trail hikes pushed the team toward experiments that were simple in design but “rigorous” in execution. The condom solution solved the sealing problem elegantly. Good field science often looks improvised. The real discipline is changing exactly one variable at a time, even when your primary research tool is something you bought at a pharmacy in “Manaus.”
Questions remain. The biggest towers may handle stress better for reasons beyond simple volume; soil composition, builder strength, and moisture could all play a role. The team also documented one tower roughly “18 inches” tall, an outlier that raises its own questions about what’s achievable when conditions are right, and nobody interrupts. Those “loose” threads are what keep the research alive. A “strange tower” in the Amazon is interesting enough on its own; a “strange tower” whose function you actually understand is the beginning of “something bigger.” Although at 18 inches, it was arguably already bigger than expected. That’s what she said.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
