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The New Yorker
Annals of Technology

The Cicada's Love Affair With Prime Numbers

By Patrick Di Justo

May 13, 2013

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The Cicadas Love Affair With Prime Numbers

As far back as the seventeen-hundreds, fur trappers for the Hudson's
Bay Company noted that while in some years they would collect an
enormous number of Canadian lynx pelts, in the following years hardly
any of the wild snow cats could be found--until, some years later,
when the trappers found themselves again deluged with an abundance of
lynx. Later research revealed that the rise and fall (and subsequent
rise and fall) of the lynx population correlated with the rise and
fall of the lynx's favorite food: the snowshoe hare. A bountiful year
for the hares meant a plentiful year for lynxes, while dismal hare
years were often followed by bad lynx years. The hare booms and busts
followed, on average, a ten-year cycle.

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