Cicada Life Cycle
A female cicada crawls along a tree branch, looking for a thin outer branch. She just mated with a male cicada, and her eggs are ready for laying. She finally finds the perfect spot, a young, tender branch recently sprouted from a larger one. Using a sharp, knife-like structure on her abdomen, she cuts a slit in the soft branch. In this slit, she lays her eggs, and the next generation of cicadas begins to grow.