Swarms of dying, sex-crazed insects are wreaking havoc all over the US

REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

A boy in Hungary swims with mayflies. The US isn't the only place that has to deal with them.

It's mayfly season folks, and things are getting squishy.

Mayflies, also known as shadflies, are a primitive order of insects that divide into thousands of individual species. They spend most of their lives as sexually immature "nymphs" wiggling around in lakes or sediment, out of sight and mind. But when a particular species in a particular place is ready to breed, they hatch all at once into their final, winged adult forms and swarm for a few brief sex-crazed hours before the females drop the next generation of eggs into the water and they all die.

Such is the life of this prehistoric-looking swarm bug.

Mayfly hatchings happen in late spring and early summer (thus the name), and their sheer numbers can cause problems for those humans unfortunate enough to blunder into their death orgies. Here are some of the crazy things the little monsters have done so far in 2016.