The other day I found this gnarly dead cicada shedding its exoskeleton. It was under a desk in my living room. My immediate reaction was to pick it up and put it in my frozen cicada collection in my freezer. This is what i learned on the internet: exoskeletons differ from internal skeletons in the way that they do not grow with the body of the animal. The animal must shed the old one before the new one hardens. This process is technically called Molting. The cicada I found is in the very early stages of the molting process, which is when they usually cling onto trees or anything else sturdy very tightly and a split forms on their back starting at their eyes. I actually held one once while this happened and it vibrates off and on during this process in order to shake free of the shell.