The Amazing Cicada
First up this isn't a living cicada, just the dried-up exoskeleton after molting. We get hundreds, if not thousands of these every few years, being surrounded by bush.
As kids we used to stick these to our shirts by their spiky legs to make badges. Unfortunately, they are extremely brittle and dry and crumble easily. Still, it was fun as a young boy to try and scare the girls 😉
So some obligatory fun facts about these fascinating creatures:
1 - they are the loudest insect in the world. I can attest to this, we have to shut our rumpus room door at 8pm every night to hear each other, or the TV. They can hit 120db, which is approaching the pain threshold for the human ear. Sometimes when my wife is talking about the tasks she has lined up for me I may accidently leave the door open 😂
2 - Australian cicadas live 6-7 years underground, emerge and shed their skin, then make as much noise as possible madly trying to find a female for mating, worse than any hormonal human teenager even, living only a couple of weeks as an adult.
3 - there are 2 families of cicadas, the largest has 3,000 species on every continent, except Antartica. The second family is an ancient one and there are only 2 species found only in southern Australia.
4 - Only male cicadas sing. They do this in an attempt to find a mate. I wouldn't make a good cicada, my singing would tend to repel any potential mate
5 - one last handy hint , I learned from Sir David Attenborough, if you want to catch a male cicada, click your fingers. That approximates the sound females make and they will follow the sound. I'm not sure why you would want to catch one but there you go.
I did catch a photo of one freshly emerged from his shell today and unable to fly as yet. Didn’t even need to click my fingers. . Must post that one soon.
Have a great week !
The Amazing Cicada
First up this isn't a living cicada, just the dried-up exoskeleton after molting. We get hundreds, if not thousands of these every few years, being surrounded by bush.
As kids we used to stick these to our shirts by their spiky legs to make badges. Unfortunately, they are extremely brittle and dry and crumble easily. Still, it was fun as a young boy to try and scare the girls 😉
So some obligatory fun facts about these fascinating creatures:
1 - they are the loudest insect in the world. I can attest to this, we have to shut our rumpus room door at 8pm every night to hear each other, or the TV. They can hit 120db, which is approaching the pain threshold for the human ear. Sometimes when my wife is talking about the tasks she has lined up for me I may accidently leave the door open 😂
2 - Australian cicadas live 6-7 years underground, emerge and shed their skin, then make as much noise as possible madly trying to find a female for mating, worse than any hormonal human teenager even, living only a couple of weeks as an adult.
3 - there are 2 families of cicadas, the largest has 3,000 species on every continent, except Antartica. The second family is an ancient one and there are only 2 species found only in southern Australia.
4 - Only male cicadas sing. They do this in an attempt to find a mate. I wouldn't make a good cicada, my singing would tend to repel any potential mate
5 - one last handy hint , I learned from Sir David Attenborough, if you want to catch a male cicada, click your fingers. That approximates the sound females make and they will follow the sound. I'm not sure why you would want to catch one but there you go.
I did catch a photo of one freshly emerged from his shell today and unable to fly as yet. Didn’t even need to click my fingers. . Must post that one soon.
Have a great week !