Remarkable acoustic talents

24 hours a day the cicadas make noise here in the garden. At sun raise and sunset they get particularly loud. I don’t really mind it, but there are enough people here who can’t really coop with it, isn’t it mum? ;)

Some interesting info about cicadas:

-Cicadas spend most of their lives as nymphs underground. This may be as long as 17 years! In the nymphal final developmental stage, they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then shed their skins on a nearby plant and emerge as adults. (they have favourite trees is our garden to shed their skin. On some trees there are many many of those discarded cicada skins stuck to the tree bark).




-Most adult cicadas live 2 to 3 weeks but some live only for a day or two, or less.

- Only the males possess a pair of sound-producing, or "singing", organs located on the sides of the first abdominal segment.

-The male cicada makes the loudest sound in the insect world; they have their own built-in sound system(some males are able to reach volumes as high as 100 decibels)




-The sound made by the male cicada can carry for up to a mile.

-The sound is made by vibrating the ribbed plates in a pair of amplifying cavities at the base of the abdomen.

-Each species has its own distinctive call and only attracts females of its own kind even though rather similar species may co-exist.

-A female cicada lays her eggs in the twigs of trees and shrubs. She places the eggs in small holes that she makes with a sawlike organ near the tip of her abdomen.

-The female cicada can lay four hundred to six hundred eggs.

-After the adults have mated both die.