Some friends living in the countryside should have seen a strange phenomenon, that is, sometimes some mysterious white foam can be found on the leaves of some plants. But these places are rarely passed by, and it doesn't look like who threw up, so what is it? Some elderly people living in the countryside say that these "white foams" are the spit of snakes! Is this true? So will it be toxic?
Today, let's explore the answers.
Generally speaking, this kind of "white foam" can be found at the turn of spring and summer. Moreover, they often have different shapes, with a single foam, several connected together, and some enough to cover the entire blade...
But in many cases, this "white foam" appears on a wild plant called "snakeberry". Snakeberry believes that many friends have seen it, and it often has some small red "strawberries". About it, there are also rural elderly people who say that this is a "snake fruit", and if a snake passes by here, it will grow this fruit, so they all say that snakeberries are poisonous!
In fact, it is said that snakeberries are poisonous, but the people in the past prevented children from eating wild fruits and making them up blindly. Just because snakeberries grow on the ground, they are easily contaminated with bacteria, unhygienic, and it is easy to feel uncomfortable eating too much. And the people in the past, where there are so many exquisite. Eating uncomfortable is toxic, so there is such a saying.
Back to the "white foam", because it often appears on the snakeberry plant, people used to think that it is also related to snakes, so they thought it was snake spit, which is actually completely unscientific.
So, what exactly is this strange "white foam"?
In fact, it is a liquid substance secreted by animals in order to protect themselves during reproduction. In the beginning, this "white foam" is not so big, at first it is only the size of a point, and then the adult worm will flap its wings and "blow it up". And this magical animal is an insect called "cicada".
In fact, if you look closely, you may be able to find milky white worms squirming inside from those "white foams". But often the first reaction people have when they see these "spits" is "Wow! So disgusting! ", and then hide far away. And this, just in the arms of the mother of the cicada, there are many animals after seeing this strange "white foam", they are not willing to touch, which can make the baby of the cicada grow up safely.
Unlike the common cicadas in summer, the average cicada often lives in the soil in infancy, and only when summer comes, will climb the tree and feather into an adult cicada. The cicadas, on the other hand, reproduce and grow through this foam, and because of this, there is a foam "foam" in their name.
These foams are secreted from the end of the cicada's abdomen. At the end of their abdomen, glands that secrete foam grow. These glands initially secrete a thin, sticky gelatinous fluid, which then combines with the gases emitted from the sides of the body to form small bubbles.
Young cicadas will grow up slowly under the protection of these spits, and these foam can remain dry for a long time, so as to ensure that the young cicadas will not be sunburned. Not only that, they ate, drank, and slept in spit until the day they metamorphosed into adult worms.
The newly feathered cicadas have a snow-white body, but slowly, their bodies will begin to turn black, and they will always become like this, and they are completely different from the cuteness of their childhood. Although they grow into adult worms, they are still small, no more than 1 cm long, and they have a pointed horn on their heads, which looks particularly powerful. Not only that, but in the study of scientists, the hind legs of the cicadas are actually very strong, which can make them jump very high in an instant, for example, a cicada with only 3 mm can jump to more than 70 centimeters in a split second, which is amazing!
Like common cicadas, adult cicadas are also plantation insects, and their mouths are like a spike that can pierce into the roots of plants and enjoy their juices.
However, such a cute cicada is a very harmful insect.
There is a kind of cicada called "rice cicada", which specializes in harming rice. Adult rice cicadas use their spikes to suck the sap from rice leaves. You say you can suck it, and the rice leaves that have been pierced by them will begin to slowly turn yellow and wither. This seriously affects the yield and quality of rice. Therefore, some farmers who mainly grow rice hate them very much. Sure enough, there are two sides to everything!