New York City residents have taken to social media as scores of winged aphids filled the skies at the same time as smoke from Canadian wildfires, invading multiple boroughs.
Photographer Jeremy Cohen pointed out bugs that were dying on his shirt and glasses when he was biking in a Thursday Twitter video.
“It feels like the apocalypse right now,” he remarked.
Multiple Twitter users referenced the ten plagues of Egypt in the biblical story of Exodus, including flies.
Scientists have told multiple outlets that these bugs are aphids.
Professor David Lohman, an entomologist at the City University of New York, told The Associated Press that the warm winter temperatures may have contributed to the swarms. Aphids don’t usually come out in New York City until after summer.
The sun rises out of a cloud as smoke shrouds the skyline of lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center in New York City on June 30, 2023, as seen from Jersey City, New Jersey. ((Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images))
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“It won’t be much longer, I’m sure,” Gangloff said.
On the underside of the leaf of a young apple tree, there are green aphids. The aphids, which are only a few millimeters in size, pierce the plant cells with their proboscis and feed on the sugary plant sap. Aphids reproduce especially in dry, warm early summers. ((Photo by Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images))
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While they are a nuisance, New York City’s Public Health Department said there is nothing to be afraid of.