Native to North America, the cicada is an interesting insect with a lot of symbolism. If you close your eyes and listen on a warm night, you might hear the humming of the cicadas. The sound can be almost overpowering as hundreds of cicadas sing their mating songs.

You might recognize the cicada, or it’s exoskeleton, stuck to the tree bark. I know growing up, I had never seen a live cicada. I had only seen the shells attached to the trees and wondered about these fascinating insects.

They start as eggs being planted in the bark of a twig. When the eggs hatch, the nymphs fall to the ground where they burrow up to 8 feet underground for most of their life. While underground, they feed on the sap of the tree they have burrowed under. Larger species of cicadas will create mud towers above ground to allow airflow into their burrow. In the final stages of the cicada’s youth, they will burrow out of the ground and molt and leave the shell we are used to seeing on the tree.

Cicadas generally live to about five years. However, some species in North America live for up to 17 years. This is pretty uncommon in insects, but they think the cicada’s long life cycle was in direct response to predators.

One fun fact about cicadas is that they were eaten in Ancient Greece. They are still eaten today in Burma, Malaysia, Latin America, China and Central Africa. There was actually a case in the Missouri, United States where an owner of an ice cream shop incorporated cicadas into a batch. It was the only batch they would make because the Department of Public Health said they couldn’t do it anymore.

In addition, to being eaten, they are used in traditional Chinese medicines. How they would do it is by using the shells of the cicadas.

Cicada Tattoo Symbolism

We’ve heard many people say they received a cicada tattoo to remind them of the concept of time. The reason behind this is because the cicada is able to predict the best time to burrow out of the ground to produce the most offspring. This phenomenon is still a mystery to biologists, but they happen to reproduce when the least predators are around. Part of this is their long life cycle. Most of their predators only live for a couple years so they might pick a time to reproduce when their predators are in their infancy.