Every hot season, if you walk into the cooling shaded plantation, such as the Botanical Gardens, you would not miss the ear piercing sound made by the cicadas. In my whole life, the first encounter with it was in Raub area, it flew into the place where I stayed. A huge insect in deed. I was a bit hesitated to chase it out of my room, as I do not know whether it bites or not.Surprisingly, two days ago I went to Alexandra Butterfly Trial to take some shoots, along my way as I searched for butterflies, I heard the same piercing sound around me. I made a search and found this littel cicada on a tree trunk, making it happy sunny day song.
In Chinese, the proper name for this insect is '蝉‘, same pronunciation as Zen in Buddhism. Therefore, the Chinese also called it 'Zhi Liao'. That means knowing everything. This insect is a poetic creature, as there were many poets written poems on it.
The scientific information of this insect is as follow:
The eggs are laid in twigs. The newly hatched young drops to the ground and, burrowing into it, feeds by sucking the juices of roots. It lives in this way for some time (the duration depending on the species), its appearance changing but slightly. Finally, it digs out by means of its enlarged front feet, crawls on a tree-trunk or some such thing, splits down the back and liberates the adult.
The adult male "sings," often very loudly and shrilly, by vibrating membranes stretched over a pair of sound-chambers situated, one at each side, near the base of the abdomen.
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