Lesson 20 Cicada

Lesson 20  Cicada

Faber

The cicada's crypt

I have a very good environment to study the habits of cicadas. At the beginning of July, the cicada takes over the tree in front of my door. I am the master of the house, but it is the ruler outside the door. With its rule, the place is not quiet in any way.

The first appearance of the cicadas each year is at the summer solstice. There are several small round holes in the sun-baked road, with the holes level with the ground. It is through these round holes that the cicada larvae crawl out and become fully cicadas on the ground. Cicadas prefer dry, sunny places. The larvae have powerful "tools" that can burrow through sun-dried soil and gravel. To examine their abandoned caches, I must use a knife to dig.

The small round hole is about an inch in diameter, and there is no dirt around it. Most digging insects, such as the golden dung beetle, always have a mound of earth outside their areoles. This difference is due to the difference in how they work. The dung beetle starts at the entrance of the hole, so the excavated waste is piled up on the ground. The larvae of the cicada come up from underground, and the last job is to open the doorway. Because the doorway is not yet open, it is not possible to pile up dirt at the entrance." ,

Most of the cicada tunnels are 15 or 16 inches deep, wider underneath, but completely closed up at the bottom. Where did the dirt move to when the tunnels were made? Why don't the walls collapse? Anyone would think that the cicada larvae climbing up and down with clawed legs would collapse the dirt and stuff their house. In fact, it does its work almost like a miner or a railroad engineer. Miners use pillars to support tunnels, and railroad engineers use brick walls to make tunnels strong. The cicada is as clever as they are, coating the walls of the tunnel with plaster. It has a very sticky liquid hidden in its body that can be used to make mortar. Burrows are often built on the roots of plants that contain sap, in order to obtain sap from these roots.

It is very important to be able to climb up and down inside the burrow very casually. It must know what the weather is like outside before it can decide if the day has arrived when it can come out to sunbathe. So it works for weeks, even months, to make a circle of plastered walls very strong, in order to be suitable for crawling up and down. The top of the tunnel leaves a finger-thick layer of soil to withstand the harsh weather outside, until the last moment. As long as there is some good weather breath, it will climb up, using the top of the thin cover to examine the climate situation.

If it estimates that there is rain or a storm outside - the most important thing when the delicate larvae molt - it carefully slips under the warm, tight tunnel. If the climate seems warm, it smashes the ceiling with its claws and crawls to the ground.

Its bloated body has a sap inside that can be used to ward off the dust in the cave. As it digs, it sprays the sap on the soil, turning it into mud, so the walls become softer. The larva then presses up with its fat and heavy body to make the mud squeeze into the gaps of the dry soil. Therefore, it often emerges on the ground with many damp mud spots on its body.

Cicada larvae first emerge on the ground, often wandering around the neighborhood, seeking a suitable spot - a small dwarf tree, a clump of thyme, a wild grass leaf, or a shrub branch to shed its skin. When it finds it, it climbs up and grasps it tightly with the claws of its forefeet, not moving at all.

Then its outer skin begins to split from its back, revealing the pale green body of the cicada inside. The head comes out first, followed by the straw and front legs, and finally the hind legs with the folded wings. At this point, the whole body comes out except for the tail.

Then, it performs a strange gymnastics. It leaps in the air, flips over, hangs its head upside down, and stretches its folded wings outward, spreading them as wide as it can. Then, with a movement that is almost impossible to see, it tumbles up as hard as it can and hooks its empty skin with its front claws. This action causes the tail end to come out of the shell, a total process that takes about half an hour.

This newly freed cicada is not very strong in the short term. Before its tender body has energy and beautiful coloration, it must be well bathed in sunlight and air. With only its front claws hanging on the shell it has shed, it sways in the breeze, still fragile and still green. It is not until it turns brown that it is as strong as the usual cicada. Assuming it occupied the branch at nine o'clock in the morning, it probably did not throw off its skin and fly away until half past twelve. The empty shell hangs on the branch, sometimes for a month or two.

Cicada eggs

The common cicada prefers to lay its eggs on dry, thin branches. It chooses the smallest branch, as thick as a dead blade of grass or pencil, and often a twig that is cocked upward and nearly dead.

When she finds a suitable thin branch, she pierces it with a sharp tool on her thorax to make a row of small holes. These small holes are formed as if the fibers were torn and slightly picked up by a needle stabbed down diagonally. If it is undisturbed, thirty or forty holes are often pierced in a dead branch. It is in these holes that the eggs are laid. The small holes become narrow paths that slope down one by one. About ten eggs are laid in one small hole, so the total number of eggs laid is about three or four hundred.

This is a very nice family of insects. The reason it lays these many eggs is to defend itself against some special danger. There must be a large number of eggs that are destroyed in order for there to be any survivors. It took me many observations to learn what this danger was. The danger comes from a very small gnat, and the cicada becomes a huge monster compared to it.

Like the cicada, the gnat has a piercing tool that is located near the middle of the body below and sticks out at right angles to the body. As soon as the cicada eggs are produced, the gnats immediately try to destroy them. This is truly a great calamity for the cicada family. It's amazing how calm and unconcerned they are before the big monster, which can crush them with just one step. I have seen three gnats staying there in turn, ready to prey on an unlucky cicada.

The cicada had just filled a small hole with eggs and went to a slightly higher place to make a new hole when the gnats immediately arrived. Although the cicada's claws could reach it, the gnat was calm, not at all afraid, and pricked a hole in the cicada's egg as if it were in its own home, putting its own egg inside. The cicada flies away, and most of the holes have been mixed with the eggs of foreign species, destroying the cicada's eggs. The larvae of this quickly maturing gnat, one in each small hole, feed on the cicada eggs, replacing the cicada family.

The poor mother knows nothing about this. Her large, sharp eyes are not blind to the unsuspecting presence of these terrible enemies. Yet it remains indifferent and allows itself to be sacrificed. It is very easy to crush these bad seeds, but it cannot change its instincts to save its family.

I have seen cicada eggs hatching through a magnifying glass. It starts out very much like a very small fish, with large, dark eyes and a kind of fin under its body, made up of two front legs joined together. This fin has some motor power to help the larva come out of its shell and to help it get over branches with fibers - something that is more difficult to do." ,

Once the fish-shaped larvae reach the outside of the hole, the skin is instantly removed. But the shed skin automatically forms a thread by which the larva can attach itself to the branch. Before the larva hits the ground, it sunbathes here, kicking its legs and trying its muscles, sometimes lazily swaying at the end of the rope.

Its tentacles are now free, swinging from side to side; its legs can stretch; its front claws can open and close freely. The body hangs, swaying at the slightest breeze. It is here preparing for its future emergence. I have seen no more wonderful insects than this.

Soon, it falls to the ground. This little flea-sized creature swings on the line to prevent it from falling on the hard ground. The body gradually becomes stronger in the air. It began to engage in serious real life.

At this point, it has a lot of danger in front of it. Just a little wind can blow it on hard rocks, or rutted sewage, or hairless yellow sand, or clay that is too tough to burrow down.

This weak animal is in desperate need of concealment, so it must immediately go underground to find a place to hide. It was cold and there was a risk of death if it was slow. It had to look everywhere for soft soil. There was no doubt that many died before they could be found.

Finally, it found a suitable spot and dug the ground with the hooks of its forefeet. I saw him swing his "hoe" through the magnifying glass, digging out the soil and throwing it on the ground. A few minutes later, a hole was dug. The little creature burrowed down, hid itself, and has not been seen since.

The underground life of the immature cicada is still a secret. But the time elapsed before it came to the surface is known to us, about four years. After that, the singing in the sunlight is only five weeks.

Four years of hard work in the dark and one month of enjoyment in the sun, this is the life of the cicada. We should not hate its boisterous song, for it has been digging in the earth for four years, and only now is it able to put on beautiful clothes, grow wings to rival those of birds of prey, and bask in the warmth of the sun. What kind of cymbal can be loud enough to celebrate its hard-earned moment of joy?