Cicada - Life Cycle

Life Cycle

Cicadas live underground as nymphs for most of their lives, at depths ranging from about 30 cm (1 ft) down to 2.5 m (about 8.5 ft). The nymphs feed on root juice and have strong front legs for digging.

In the final nymphal instar, they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then molt (shed their skins) on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as adults. The abandoned exoskeleton remains, still clinging to the bark of trees.

Read more about this topic:  Cicada

Famous quotes containing the words life and/or cycle:

    “Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
    —Jean Baker Miller (20th century)

    “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
    —Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)