I was just reading the blog posts about Black Friday which got me depressed which made me think about drastic changes which made me think about cicadas and how cool they are.
At the end of the summer last year I was at my mom's house when I passed her car and happened to see a cicada shedding its skin. I've often found the remaining skins attached to trees, bikes, and fences, but I had never seen the process. I took these pictures with my phone, so I apologize for the quality and lighting.
So now thinking about cicadas again I decided to learn a few things:
- Cicadas are not related to locusts. Locusts are a kind of grasshopper
- There are over 3,000 cicada species
- Only males make noise
- Some can live up to 17 years
- They feed off of xylem (a tissue in plants that conducts water and dissolved nutrient upwards from the root) from tree roots and plant sap
- They are often eaten in China, Malaysia, and Latin America
Fun Fact: I once ate a live cicada for $50... the only word I would use to describe it is juicy.
Cicadas are cool!
I think I like cicada's a lot more now. Gracias!
ReplyDeleteOver 3,000 species of cicada... that's freakin' insane!! I always forget that animals, such as cows, and insects, such as flies, have numerous varieties of species that make up their whole.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this is pretty cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cicada_molting_animated-2.gif
One thing that I do find interesting, as well as eerie, is the fact that snakes shed their skin as well... why would both lifeforms have, and need that ability??
Where I'm from, we have a cicado outburst every 17 years. And I mean outburst in the most extreme terms. They come from the trees (I live in Lake FOREST, so you can imagine there are TONS of trees) and drop to the ground basically overnight and they are EVERYWHERE. We had an outbreak my junior year of high school and for weeks all you could hear were the cicadas making their cicada noise. PLUS, you couldn't walk anywhere without walking all over them. I kid you not, they were COVERING the ground. I think you might like it if you like cicadas this much. I'll let you know the next time they come to town...
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness I have no worse childhood memory than the cicada year!. Ew they were so terrible I remember standing outside while my parents were tending to their garden. You literally couldn't take a step anywhere without stepping on one and hearing and feeling that loud CRUNCH and then seeing splatters of what looked like whiteout everywhere. I remember being completely frozen like a statue and my dad had to carry me inside and the whole time I could hear them crunching under his feet. It was so traumatizing. There were so many of them and so many of their moltings that every morning my dad would have to sweep the driveway of their shells. And they weren't even good flyers! You would get hit in the face by like five in the matter of just walking to the car. I dread the year the cicada outburst comes back.
ReplyDelete