Scientist explains weeping petai tree to astounded public: It’s cicada pee

For the last two weeks, villagers had gathered around a single petai (stinky bean) tree at night near the Kampung Petani area of Kota Baru, Kelantan to witness an unusual phenomenon: A tree that was seemingly gushing water from its branches.

via Wikimedia Commons
via Wikimedia Commons

Locals observed that it was crying, with some even collecting the precious liquid mana that it was excreting to use for sundry wound and ailments. As it were, the would-be naturopaths were gathering and covering themselves in cicada pee.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtLEt34Hxhb/

Videos of the tree showed the phenomenon, something more along the lines of endless squirting accompanied by the hum of cicadas that had were clinging to it. If you look closely, you can actually see the urine being excreted by the lil bugs.

Professor Dr. Abdul Hamid Ahmad, a zoologist from the University of Malaysia Sabah (UMS), has explained that some cicada species live on the branches of the tree, sucking its nutrients and later excreting them, giving some the impression that the tree is crying.

Speaking to Astro Awani, Dr. Abdul Hamid explains that the frequency of the fluid release has to do with the fact that the nutrient density coming from the tree is very little, resulting in the cicadas needing to drink more liquid to compensate. Just like a human drinking up more than usual, all that fluid needs to go somewhere.




And that somewhere was in the buckets and pales that many locals placed under the tree to catch the falling “elixir.”

Now the good professor doctor is asking media outlets to help push the message out, dispelling any misinformation that purports that the liquid has any medicinal value. While the urine is not harmful in and of itself, it’s still an excrement of the cicada’s digestive tract, and it’s not gonna cure anything either.

“We need to stop the public from using the water as medicine,” he said.

Word.



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