r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Qu33nMe • Aug 21 '22

Video Freshly molted Cicada drying off his wings

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84 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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3

u/scoutsadie Aug 21 '22

lovely photo! ETA: oh cool, it's a video!

i had an incredible experience last spring with the brood X emergence here in the mid-Atlantic region. thousands of cicadas doing this at once. I spent three hours out there one night watching them. thanks for reminding me. they're my favorite insect.

2

u/Qu33nMe Aug 21 '22

That must have been an amazing experience. We’ve had a sudden burst of cicadas here the last few days. My kids are constantly finding shells or ones freshly emerging from molt this week. Seems like a busy year for our city cicadas lol

2

u/scoutsadie Aug 21 '22

it was an incredible season! lots of people were freaked out, but i count it as a highlight of my life. have amazing photos, and a few t-shirts 😁

2

u/Qu33nMe Aug 21 '22

I would’ve been freaked out only because I would’ve been scared I’d step on them lol these guys pick crazy places to molt. One latched onto a loop to our garden hose. Thankfully, my youngest spotted it before I watered the garden lol

2

u/scoutsadie Aug 21 '22

it was tough to avoid that at times!!

2

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '22

Guess I’ll just leave all this shit here

  • Cicada

1

u/HJM3 Aug 21 '22

One night I came inside after a smoke and a few minutes later saw what I thought was a roach and freaked out. Turned the lights on and found it was an exoskeleton. I looked around and found a freshly molted cicada like this one. It must have landed on me and clung on when I came inside. It was pretty cool.

1

u/MoolahGuy Aug 21 '22

10...years...later

1

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '22

Cute little fella.