Think cicadas are weird? Check out superfans, who eat the bugs, use them in art and even striptease

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

FOREST PARK, Illinois (AP) — The periodical cicadas that have blanketed parts of the American Midwest this spring are strange creatures, but they have nothing on some of their superfans. There’s the woman who has taken more than 4,600 photos of them in her backyard and treats them almost like children. There’s the New York chef who collects them for cooking, including tempura cicada. There’s the Wisconsin artist who incorporates the hardy insects into her work. But the capper might be a professor from Ohio who worked up a kind of cicada striptease that has her bursting out of a cardboard costume as a red-eyed, adult nymph.