I saw my first [Living] Cicada today
 

My whole life (and moms whole life) I was led to believe these bug shells we sometimes come across were Locus shells..

Well, I found a LIVING source of these shells to day in my foot DR's parking lot! I didn't have a phone so I couldn't take a pic but I looked it up and found out that its not a locus! It's a Cicada!

And I even found a pic of one with the exact coloring of the one i saw!

https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/...iLEP6I1TaE.jpg


Mom was soooo amazed! She had only ever found the shells or skins! In 62 years she had never seen a live one! It took me 26 years to find one. >w>

It was sooo pretty! I picked it up off the parking lot and put it near a small shurb tree thing for shade and protection. Didn't want the pretty thing to get hit by a car..

On that, note, here's some cicada sounds

That was beautiful law <3

lol DK, I have a friend who HATES the sound of cicadas. I think it's great fun to send her short videos I take of them droning on during the summer, and she usually responds by sending me a picture of herself flipping the bird.

When we were kids, the sibling used to chase me around with the shells.

I always found the shells soo creepy xD mom would pick them up and i would refuse to touch it

wow! that's so awesome!

I see them all the time, I thought everyone saw them! I've even seen a few fresh from their shells and caught one as it was hatching! We picked up the shell, put it in a jar, and watched it hatch, it was pretty cool.

Although it's not a good sound when one gets stuck in a car's windshield wiper. :( It made the most awful noises against the glass until we got it out.

We have so many Cicadas around here, we hear that "music" all the time. I just zone it out most of the time, way to use to it. I really don't even notice the sound unless there are a LOT of cicadas, or someone points it out to me.

I usually only see the shells, but my husbands supervisor found a dead one a brought it to me because I told him I hadn't seen one before. It was...odd and interesting. But...that was D for you. I mean, this dude had a stuffed Squirrel (taxidermy stuffed) on his desk with owls feel on it's hands and a turtle shell on it's back. So..yeah. Strange, and awesome, guy.

We don't have much/any of those around here. But we have a lot of crickets. They're SO annoying in the Summer. I'll have to listen to those noises and see if it's better.

We hear them but never see them! =o i wish i could see them all the time.

poor thing, evil windshield wiper D:<

I even thought of this thread today, because one scared me this morning when I walked by it.

=o it scared you!?

did it start giving off a warning sound? ovo or jump out at you?!

We used to see their shells all the time at my university, plus they'd sing ALL day, so we kinda grew to hate them xD Poor things. We were the ones on their space.

I generally don't like bugs. They're creepy... But this one is pretty-looking. I guess. It's pretty for a creepy thing.

I've found that there are a lot of things that are cute and/or pretty from the right perspective as long as you don't have to deal with them yourself.

It kind of buzzed at me and flew off the other way, it was between our trash can and the bushes. There's a pine tree near there, might have hatched recently.

What do Cicadas even do...? Like... do they eat carrion? Your clothes like moths?

Do they spin some kinda silky stuff? What is their purpose?!

Well, they're edible, apparently. They provide a food source for a variety of species (including humans in some parts of the world; apparently they're quite yummy when deep-fried), including burrowing mammals. As adults they feed on tree sap.

I'm confused.

Everything I read about Cicada say they are NOT locust.. but every one around me are saying they ARE locust...

._. so lost. -doesnt want to believe everything she reads on the net, but also understands mom and mom's friend could be wrong-

Cicadas aren't, scientifically speaking, locusts. True locusts are a stress-induced metamorphosis of grasshoppers. (This fact is, in and of itself, somewhat terrifying.)

However, in many regions, people imprecisely refer to cicadas as locusts. It's technically incorrect, but not much more incorrect than saying that an ape is a monkey.

I thought it was the gorilla that wasn't the monkey o3o

Yeah, never eaten one myself, nor do I want to, but the cats that hang around outside have been digging them up and eating them. So much so that I've only seen four or five shells on the trees.

You're not wrong. Gorillas are a kind of ape. (So are gibbons, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans.) Apes and monkeys are both primates, but apes aren't monkeys and monkeys aren't apes.

But in layman's usage, plenty of people use "ape" and "monkey" interchangeably, especially for the smaller ape varieties -- show most people a picture of a gibbon and they'll say "that's a monkey!" even though it's an ape.

So the point of comparison I'm making is that calling a cicada a "locust" is like calling a gibbon a "monkey." Technically wrong, but not too far off, and pretty common.

.... That Gibbon thing is.. SO FLUFFY! o.O

If it doesn't have a tail, it's not a monkey, it's an ape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--szrOHtR6U