Word: ovipositors
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...dying act, an adult female cicada creates the next generation, laying 400 to 600 eggs inside a slender tree branch by cutting small slits in it with her ovipositor, an organ that works like a saw. Six to 10 weeks later, the eggs hatch, and nymphs fall to the ground...
...take an even more remarkable feat of "identification," "What voluptuous thrill may not shake a fly, when she at last discovers the one particular leaf, or carrion, or bit of dung, that out of all the world can stimulate her ovipositor? Does not the discharge then seem to her the only fitting thing...
...might say. He exalts the self and existence at the expense of instinct, sensation, and being. Life is absurd for the existentialist; it is not for the female fly on the bit of dung. The existentialist moans, "I am." The fly simply shakes with a "voluptuous thrill," as her ovipositor discharges...
...appreciation. And he, on the other hand, can alter many of the organic and social rules that control his behavior. Nonetheless, the fly attains fulfilment--she achieves the "only fitting thing." Would we not condemn the fly as the victim of a perverse obsession if she never discharged her ovipositor, but instead fretted continuously about her existential plight? No doubt we would be forced to conclude that her life was absurd...
...trouble comes when the female lays her eggs. She picks a tender twig, saws a slit in it with a rasplike ovipositor on her stern, lays her eggs in the slit, and soon dies. The weakened limbs may break or die too. After several weeks the eggs hatch, the larvae crawl out and drop down on the ground where they bury themselves for 16 years, 10½ months. Then, on the first hot day of May, they climb out of the ground, shed their shells, sprout wings and start a plague...