Cicada first appears in the summer of solstice every year. There are many small round holes on the exposed road surface, and the holes are flat on the ground. Cicada larvae crawl out of these round holes and become complete cicadas on the ground. Cicadas like places with dry tops and plenty of sunshine best. Larvae has a powerful tool that can penetrate dry soil and sand. I'm going to check their abandoned storage room and dig it with a knife.
This small round hole is about an inch in diameter and there is no soil around it. Most earth-digging insects, such as scarabs, always have a mound outside their nests. This difference is due to their different working methods. The golden pheasant's work began in the cave, so the excavated waste was piled on the ground. Cicada came up from the ground when it was a larva, and its last job was to open the door. Because the door has not been opened, it is impossible to accumulate dirt at the door.
Cicada's tunnels are mostly fifteen or sixteen inches deep, with a wide bottom and a completely closed bottom. Where did the soil move when the tunnel was built? Why won't the wall fall down? Everyone thought that crawling up and down with their claws would collapse the soil and block the house. In fact, it acts like a miner or a railway engineer. Miners support the tunnel with pillars, and railway engineers make it strong with rotating walls. Cicada is as clever as they are, painting the walls of the tunnel with plaster. It has a very viscous liquid hidden in its body, which can be used as a plaster. Crypts are usually built in the roots of plants containing juice in order to obtain juice from the roots.
It's important to be able to climb up and down at random in acupoints. It must know what the weather is like outside before it can decide whether it is time to go out in the sun. So it took weeks, even months, to make a circle of whitewashed walls so as to be suitable for climbing up and down. Leave a layer of finger-thick soil at the top of the tunnel to resist the bad weather outside until the last moment. As long as there is some news of good weather, it will climb up and use the thin cover on the top to investigate the weather.
If it is in the delicate larvae peeling, it is estimated that there is rain or storm outside, which is the most important thing. It carefully slips under the warm and tight tunnel. If the climate looks warm, it will break the ceiling with its claws and climb to the ground.
Its bloated body contains a kind of juice that can resist the dust in the cave. When it digs, it sprays juice on the soil, turning the soil into mud, so the walls are softer. The larva presses it up with its heavy body, so that the soil is squeezed into the cracks in the dry soil. So when it appears on the ground, there are often many wet mud spots on its body. Cicada larvae first appeared on the ground, and often wandered around nearby places, looking for a suitable place-a small dwarf tree, a bunch of thyme, a wild leaf, or a shrub branch to shed its skin. Climb up when you find it, hold it tightly with your front paws and don't move at all.
So its skin began to crack from its back, revealing a light green cicada body inside. The head comes out first, then the straw and front legs, and finally the hind legs and folded wings. At this time, the tail was removed and everyone came out.
Then, it performed a strange gymnastics. Jump and turn around in the air, hang your head upside down, straighten your wrinkled wings and try to open them. Then with an almost invisible movement, try to turn it up and hook its empty skin with its front paws. This action disengages the tail end from the shell. The whole process takes about half an hour.
This cicada, which has just been released, is not very strong in the short term. Before its weak body has energy and beautiful colors, it must be bathed in sunshine and air. Hanging on the shell with front paws, swaying in the breeze, still fragile and green. It was not until it turned brown that it was as strong as an ordinary cicada. Suppose it occupies the branches at 9: 00 in the morning and will not leave the skin until about 12: 30. Empty shells hang on branches, sometimes for a month or two.
Cicada eggs
Common cicadas like to lay eggs on dry branches. It chooses the smallest branch, as thick as hay or pencil, and it is often a twig that tilts up and almost dies.
It found the right twig and stabbed a row of small holes in its chest with a sharp tool. The formation of these holes is like stabbing the fiber obliquely with a needle, tearing it apart and slightly irritating it. If not disturbed, a dead branch will often make thirty or forty holes. Eggs are laid in these holes. Small holes become narrow roads, and they slope down one by one. A small hole lays about ten eggs, so it lays about three or four hundred eggs in total.
This is a good family of insects. The reason why it lays so many eggs is to defend against some special danger. There must be a lot of eggs, and there may be survivors after they are destroyed. I observed it many times before I knew what the danger was. This is a small gnat. Compared with it, cicada is simply a huge monster.
Like cicadas, gnats also have piercing tools, which are located under the body near the middle and protrude at right angles to the body. As soon as cicada eggs are laid, gnats want to destroy them at once. This is really a disaster for the cicada family. The monster can crush them in one step, but surprisingly, they are extremely calm and have no scruples in front of the monster. I once saw three gnats staying there in turn, ready to plunder an unlucky cicada.
As soon as the cicada fills a small hole with eggs, it goes to a slightly higher place to dig a new hole, and the little insect will come at once. Although the cicada's claws can reach it, the little gnat is calm and not afraid at all. Just like at home, he drilled a hole in the cicada's egg and put his own egg in it. The cicada flew away, and most of the holes have been mixed with heterogeneous eggs, destroying the cicada eggs. The larva of this mature insect has one in each hole and feeds on cicada eggs instead of cicada family.
Poor mother knows nothing. Its big sharp eyes turn a blind eye to these terrible enemies and stay by with malice. However, it remained indifferent and sacrificed itself. It is easy to crush these bad seeds, but it can't change the instinct to save the family.
I watched the hatching of cicada eggs through a magnifying glass. At first, it was like a small fish with big black eyes and a fin under its body, which was connected by two front legs. This kind of fin has a certain movement force, which can help the larva out of its shell and help it break away from the fiber branch. This is a difficult thing.
As soon as the fish larvae get out of the hole, their skin is peeled off. But the peeled skin will automatically form a line through which the larvae can attach to the branches. Before the larvae go ashore, they bask in the sun, kick their legs, try to strengthen their muscles, and sometimes sway lazily at the end of the line.
Its tentacles are now free, swinging from side to side; Legs can be telescopic; The front paws can be opened and closed freely. The body hangs and swings whenever there is a breeze. It is here to prepare for the future birth. The insects I saw were nothing more wonderful.
Soon it fell to the ground. This small animal as big as a flea swayed on the fishing line to prevent it from falling on the hard ground. The body is getting stronger in the air. It began to enter serious real life.
At this time, it is dangerous. Just a little wind can blow it to hard rocks, or rutted sewage, or barren yellow sand, or clay that is too hard to drill down.
This weak animal urgently needs to hide, so it must go underground to find a hiding place at once. It's very cold. If you slow down, you are in danger of death. It has to look for soft soil everywhere. There is no doubt that many of them died before they were discovered.
Finally, it found a suitable place and dug up the ground with the hook of its front foot. I saw it waving a hoe from the magnifying glass, digging up the soil and throwing it on the ground. A few minutes later, a pit was dug. This little thing went down, hid and never appeared again.
The underground life of the immature cicada is still a secret, but before it came to the ground, we knew the time of underground life, about four years. After that, singing in the sun will only last for five weeks.
Four years' hard work in the dark and one month's joy in the sunshine are the cicada's life. We shouldn't hate its noisy singing, because it has been dug for four years. Now it can put on beautiful clothes, grow wings that can compete with birds and bathe in the warm sunshine. What kind of cymbals are loud enough to praise its hard-won moment of joy?