Insects & Invertebrates comparison

Cicada vs Grasshopper: Key Differences Explained

The short answer

Look at the mouth and the hind legs. A cicada is a true bug with a piercing beak it slots into plant tissue to drink sap, and its hind legs are ordinary walking legs. A grasshopper has chewing mandibles that shred leaves and enlarged hind femora built for jumping. Their sounds come from different hardware too: male cicadas buckle drum-like tymbal membranes on the abdomen, while grasshoppers rasp roughened hind legs against their forewings.

The main difference

A cicada is a hemipteran that sucks xylem sap through a beak and sings with abdominal tymbals; a grasshopper is an orthopteran that chews leaves and stridulates with its hind legs.

Both are stout, brown or green, loud summer insects of roughly the same body length, and both are heard far more often than seen, so the buzzing in a hot field or a roadside tree gets attributed to whichever name the listener knows.

At a glance

Comparison of Cicada and Grasshopper across 7 dimensions, with an interpretation of each difference.
What differs	Cicada	Grasshopper	What it means
Order	Hemiptera, the true bugs, in the superfamily Cicadoidea	Orthoptera, suborder Caelifera, alongside locusts	Different orders, so the resemblance is superficial rather than a close relationship.
Mouthparts	A jointed piercing beak folded under the head, used to tap plant fluid	Strong chewing mandibles that cut and grind leaf tissue	Feeding hardware explains why one leaves ragged leaves and the other leaves none.
Hind legs	Similar in length to the other legs; adults walk and fly rather than jump	Greatly enlarged femora storing elastic energy for long jumps	Leg proportions separate them instantly, even in a blurred photograph.
Sound organ	Paired tymbals on the abdomen, buckled by muscle and amplified by air sacs	A peg row on the hind femur rasped against a hardened forewing vein	Tymbal song carries much further and is continuous rather than delivered in short rasps.Only males sing in both groups, and a few grasshoppers use wing crackling instead of leg stridulation.
Immature stage	Nymphs live underground for years, feeding on root xylem before emerging to moult	Nymphs hatch from soil egg pods and develop above ground over weeks to months	The long subterranean phase is the single most distinctive fact about cicada biology.
Wings at rest	Clear membranous wings held roof-like over the body and often longer than the abdomen	Leathery narrow forewings covering folded fan-like hindwings	Transparent tented wings on a stout insect point to a cicada rather than an orthopteran.
Where you find them	Trees and shrubs, with shed nymphal skins clinging to trunks after emergence	Grassland, meadow and bare ground, flushing underfoot as you walk	Vertical habitat versus ground layer is a reliable separator in the field.

Order: CicadaHemiptera, the true bugs, in the superfamily Cicadoidea
GrasshopperOrthoptera, suborder Caelifera, alongside locusts
Different orders, so the resemblance is superficial rather than a close relationship.
Mouthparts: CicadaA jointed piercing beak folded under the head, used to tap plant fluid
GrasshopperStrong chewing mandibles that cut and grind leaf tissue
Feeding hardware explains why one leaves ragged leaves and the other leaves none.
Hind legs: CicadaSimilar in length to the other legs; adults walk and fly rather than jump
GrasshopperGreatly enlarged femora storing elastic energy for long jumps
Leg proportions separate them instantly, even in a blurred photograph.
Sound organ: CicadaPaired tymbals on the abdomen, buckled by muscle and amplified by air sacs
GrasshopperA peg row on the hind femur rasped against a hardened forewing vein
Tymbal song carries much further and is continuous rather than delivered in short rasps.Only males sing in both groups, and a few grasshoppers use wing crackling instead of leg stridulation.
Immature stage: CicadaNymphs live underground for years, feeding on root xylem before emerging to moult
GrasshopperNymphs hatch from soil egg pods and develop above ground over weeks to months
The long subterranean phase is the single most distinctive fact about cicada biology.
Wings at rest: CicadaClear membranous wings held roof-like over the body and often longer than the abdomen
GrasshopperLeathery narrow forewings covering folded fan-like hindwings
Transparent tented wings on a stout insect point to a cicada rather than an orthopteran.
Where you find them: CicadaTrees and shrubs, with shed nymphal skins clinging to trunks after emergence
GrasshopperGrassland, meadow and bare ground, flushing underfoot as you walk
Vertical habitat versus ground layer is a reliable separator in the field.

How they are related

Cicadas are hemipterans, sitting in the superfamily Cicadoidea alongside other sap-feeding bugs such as leafhoppers, spittlebugs and aphids. Grasshoppers are orthopterans in the suborder Caelifera, related to locusts, and more distantly to crickets and katydids. The two orders diverged deep in insect evolution, so no meaningful shared ancestry lies behind the resemblance. Both names cover many species: several thousand cicadas and more than ten thousand caeliferans have been described worldwide.

A note on naming: Cicada covers several thousand species in Cicadoidea, of which only the North American Magicicada groups are periodical; grasshopper covers the whole suborder Caelifera, including the species that form locust phases.

Telling them apart

A cicada is broad-headed with widely separated bulbous eyes, transparent veined wings held tent-like over the body, and legs of even length. A grasshopper is narrower, with a sloping face, and its hind legs are obviously oversized and bent above the body. Cicadas often sit motionless high on a trunk or branch and fly heavily when disturbed, while grasshoppers spring from grass and glide a short distance before landing.

Loud continuous buzzing from a tree, a broad-headed insect with clear tented wings, and empty brown nymphal shells stuck to a trunk: cicada. Dry rasping from grass, an insect that leaps as you walk, with thick bent hind legs and leathery forewings: grasshopper. If you can see the mouth, a folded beak means cicada and visible chewing jaws mean grasshopper, and that test never fails.

Habitat and distribution

Cicadas are tied to woody plants because the nymphs feed on roots and the adults on branches, so they are creatures of woodland, orchards, parks and treed suburbs. Grasshoppers are insects of open sunlit ground: grassland, meadow, dune, verge and cropland. Both groups reach their greatest diversity in warm regions, and both can be locally abundant, but a chorus coming from the canopy is cicadas while a rasping from the sward is grasshoppers.

Diet and ecological role

Cicadas feed exclusively on plant fluid. Nymphs pierce roots underground and adults tap branches, drawing on xylem, which is nutrient-poor and requires them to process large volumes. Grasshoppers chew leaves, stems and flowers, and some are grass specialists while others take a broad range of plants. Because the mouthparts differ so completely, the two leave entirely different evidence: chewed leaf margins from grasshoppers, and no chewing damage from cicadas.

Behaviour

Male cicadas sing from perches, sometimes in synchronised choruses that reach high sound levels, and periodical species in eastern North America emerge in enormous synchronised broods on thirteen or seventeen-year cycles, a pattern usually explained as predator satiation. Grasshoppers sing individually from the ground layer, and certain species enter a gregarious locust phase under crowding, changing colour, shape and behaviour and forming migratory swarms.

Senses and adaptations

Cicadas amplify their tymbal song using large air sacs that occupy much of the male abdomen, and some species reach sound levels among the highest measured in insects. Their wings carry nanoscale surface structures that shed water and have attracted materials research. Grasshoppers instead invest in a catapult mechanism, storing elastic energy in the hind femur for release in a jump, and in camouflage colouring matched to grass, soil or burnt ground.

More on this topic: Animal senses and adaptations.

Lifespan and life stages

Cicada nymphs are among the longest-lived immature insects, spending several years underground in annual species and thirteen or seventeen years in the periodical Magicicada groups, after which adults live only a few weeks. Grasshoppers in temperate regions usually complete one generation a year, overwintering as eggs and living as adults for weeks to a couple of months. Warm-climate populations may fit in more than one generation.

People and these animals

Grasshoppers have a long history as agricultural pests, above all through locust outbreaks that remain a food-security issue in parts of Africa and Asia, and they are also eaten in many cuisines. Cicadas are rarely serious pests, although egg-laying slits can damage young tree twigs, and mass emergences draw enormous public interest and citizen-science recording. Both are heavily preyed on by birds, and both feature in folklore and music across many cultures.

Keeping them: what to understand first

Cicadas are essentially never kept, because the long subterranean nymphal stage and root-sap diet make captive rearing impractical, while grasshoppers and locusts are commercially reared as feeder insects for reptiles, amphibians and birds. Whether rearing feeder insects suits a household depends on space, escape prevention, local rules on keeping or releasing live insects, and welfare capacity; decisions about the animals being fed belong with a qualified veterinarian.

What they have in common

Both develop by incomplete metamorphosis, passing through nymphal stages without a pupa.
Both have males that produce loud species-specific songs used in mate attraction.
Both are plant feeders that can be locally abundant in warm months.
Both are major prey for birds, and both are eaten by people in several regions.

Key differences

Cicadas pierce and suck plant fluid; grasshoppers chew leaves with mandibles.
Grasshoppers have enlarged jumping hind legs, while cicada legs are of even length.
Cicada song comes from abdominal tymbals, grasshopper song from leg-on-wing stridulation.
Cicada nymphs develop underground for years; grasshopper nymphs develop above ground within a season.
Cicadas hold clear wings roof-like over the body, whereas grasshoppers have leathery forewings.

Where people go wrong

Attributing a canopy cicada chorus to grasshoppers in the grass below.
Assuming a cicada can jump because it is a stout summer insect of similar size.
Blaming cicadas for chewed leaves when they have no chewing mouthparts at all.
Treating cicadas as relatives of grasshoppers rather than of aphids and leafhoppers.

Frequently asked questions

Can a cicada jump like a grasshopper?

No. Adult cicadas have legs of roughly even length suited to gripping bark and walking, and they escape by flying rather than leaping. Grasshoppers carry greatly enlarged hind femora that store elastic energy and release it in a catapult-like jump, often followed by a short glide. Among cicada relatives, froghoppers and leafhoppers do jump strongly, but cicadas themselves do not.

What actually makes the cicada buzz?

A pair of tymbals, ribbed membranes on the sides of the male abdomen. Muscles buckle each tymbal in rapid succession and the clicks blur into a continuous sound, amplified by large internal air sacs that make much of the abdomen hollow. It is a completely different mechanism from grasshopper stridulation, which scrapes a peg row on the hind leg across a wing vein, and it carries much further.

Do cicadas damage plants the way grasshoppers do?

Not in the same way. Cicadas have no chewing mouthparts and cannot remove leaf tissue; they drink sap through a beak. The damage attributed to them comes mainly from females cutting slits in thin twigs to lay eggs, which can cause dieback on young trees during large emergences. Grasshoppers chew foliage directly, and in locust phases can strip vegetation across wide areas.

Why do periodical cicadas emerge all at once?

Synchronised emergence at thirteen or seventeen-year intervals is generally explained as predator satiation: so many adults appear simultaneously that predators cannot consume more than a fraction, and enough survive to breed. The long prime-numbered cycles are also argued to reduce overlap with predator population cycles. Grasshoppers have nothing comparable, completing a generation within a single season in most temperate regions.

What are the empty brown shells on tree trunks?

Those are exuviae, the shed skins of cicada nymphs. After years feeding on roots underground, a nymph digs out, climbs a trunk or fence, splits the old cuticle along the back and emerges as a winged adult, leaving the split husk gripping the surface. Grasshopper nymphs also moult, but they do so among ground vegetation and their cast skins are rarely conspicuous.

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Sources and methodology

How this comparison is built: FaunaHub comparisons are assembled from the sourced animal profiles behind them rather than written as standalone claims. Figures such as size, mass, and lifespan are typical ranges that vary by subspecies, population, region, sex, age, and — where relevant — whether an animal lives in the wild or under human care, so they are presented as ranges rather than fixed values. Where a common name covers a group rather than a single species, the page says so instead of implying a species-to-species match. Conservation status changes over time and should be confirmed against the current IUCN Red List. Dimensions that could not be supported from the underlying profiles are omitted rather than filled in.

What this page does not do: it does not rank the two animals, predict the outcome of a confrontation, or present either one as stronger, smarter, or better. It is not veterinary, medical, first-aid, handling, capture, hunting, or pest-control guidance. For an animal in your care, or any situation involving injury, contact a qualified veterinarian, your local wildlife authority, or emergency services.

Sources and further reading

Authoritative references used for general educational context. External links open in a new tab. These sources do not endorse FaunaHub.

ReferenceBritannica — Cicada — Editor-reviewed encyclopedia entry
UniversityAnimal Diversity Web — University of Michigan Museum of Zoology — Peer-edited reference accounts for animal species
Wildlife referenceXerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation — Science-based invertebrate conservation resources
ReferenceBritannica — Grasshopper — Editor-reviewed encyclopedia entry
Wildlife referenceIUCN Red List of Threatened Species — Authoritative source for current conservation status
ReferenceEncyclopaedia Britannica — Animals reference — Editor-reviewed encyclopedia overview entries
Wildlife referenceSmithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute — Animals — Educational species pages from the Smithsonian Institution

Last updated: 2026-08-04