Betsy the Cicada! 30 minutes into ecdysis (molting), I think this is the ‘baby dragon,’ or possibly ‘airplane’ stage. I imagine her softly saying wheeeeeeeee and/or making airplane whooshing sounds in this first pic. The second pic is actually 3 minutes earlier, before she stuck her hind legs out.
As you can see, she’s almost all the way out! The next step is for her to pull her upper body up, doing a kind of inverted sit-up, and then grab onto the nymph exuvium (shell) to pull her lower adbomen out and free.
TAGS: insects > cicadas > Betsy the Cicada, cicada ecdysis, Neotibicen; ecdysis
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