Crickets and grasshoppers are relatively small insects with huge hind legs for catapulting themselves to escape danger. They are both very short-lived, with their lifespan lasting nearly six months. Both crickets and grasshoppers have a very long list of predators that love to eat them for their protein. In some third-world countries, grasshoppers and crickets are seen as healthy food with essential life-saving protein. They are grilled, sauteed, fried, boiled, and sometimes have a candy or chocolate coating. But what is it that makes these two insects different?
Cricket or Grasshopper?
Crickets and grasshoppers are similar insects with the same general makeup. They both have antennas, large heads, thoraxes, oviducts (if female), six legs, and chewing mouthparts needed to crunch through tough plants and grasses. The chirping of crickets at night can be a lonely or welcoming sound, depending on the person. Grasshoppers tend to sleep at night tucked away in nearby trees, shrubs, or ditches where weeds are plentiful. Let’s find out what exactly makes these two similar insects different.
Meet the Contenders: Cricket Vs. Grasshopper
Crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, and katydids—what do they all have in common? They are both in the flying insect order orthopterans, which means “straight wings.” Both have powerful hind legs, can produce “music” during mating season and beyond, and have chewing mouthparts and antennas. The similarities don’t stop there for these two hoppers.
Cricket
Scientific Name
Size
Most crickets range from 3 to 50 millimeters or 0.12 – 2.0 inches
Appearance
The male crickets sing their lonely tunes by stridulating or crepitating, which is the scientific way of saying the crickets. Stridulating is when the cricket rubs its legs across its wings like a person playing a violin. They are also known to crepitate, which happens when the crickets snap their wings loudly as they leave.
When we startle grasshoppers from the grass, they seem to catapult themselves into the sky. Their powerful hind legs are impressive from a scientific and athletic point of view.
Habitat
Crickets are known to appear in random places at night, like the bush outside our bedroom window. They can also be found in forests, marshes, wetlands, grassy plains, meadows, fields, caves, beaches, and even underground. Like many animals, crickets are nomadic and make their home wherever food and water are plentiful—and that can even be in your home!
Diet
Crickets need to eat like any other life form, but what do these hopping insects eat? If you’ve ever had a lizard, frog, spider, or anything else that consumes crickets, you already know in pet shops, crickets are kept in dark boxes with plenty of egg carton scraps and those odd-looking small squares of jelly that serve as their nourishment. Many reptile owners choose to gut load their crickets to be more nutritious for their pet by giving the crickets a fantastic last meal.
In the wild, orange cubes of life-saving jelly are not available, meaning the cricket must forage. They eat vegetation in the form of grass, plants, and trees, and can drink the water droplets that form on the grass in the morning.
Lifespan
Crickets do not have much time to waste in their short lives. They typically only survive up to 10 weeks. If the cricket does not die from being eaten by something, being stepped on, drowning, or one of about a million other ways to exit life, it dies of old age at around 10 weeks old. That’s not a lot of time to start a family. If it lives long enough to feel cold weather, it will end in its demise.
Grasshopper
Scientific Name
Size
Grasshoppers and locusts can be up to four inches long.
Appearance
There are over 10,000 species of grasshoppers in the world and over 400 in North America. They are typically bright green, brown, tan, or any variation of such colors. When grasshoppers are born, they are a sheer white color to blend in with the stalks and leaves of the plants they eat, but once they go into the sunlight, their shell becomes a dark olive green, and can take on red or brown streaks like the adults.
Similar to other insects and arachnids, grasshoppers go through five instars. With each instar, the grasshopper sheds its outer shell or skin, letting the new larger shell underneath have room to grow. As they become adults, their wings develop.
Behavior
Grasshoppers are typically seen on warm sunny days as they leap out of the grass as we walk. They don’t just enjoy the daytime; they also feed at night, though they are more commonly seen in the daytime. Since they do not have nests, colonies, or territories, they follow a nomadic lifestyle, only staying put in one place for any length of time due to the food, water, and hiding spots available.
Habitat
Grasshoppers live in tall or short grass in rural and suburban settings. They hide camouflaged in the plants they choose to dine on and can startle a person who is gardening by suddenly leaping and flying out at them. They do not like wet conditions and are only out during warm weather. Like crickets, they cannot survive freezing temperatures.
Diet
A grasshopper’s diet can change daily as the little green beast travels the grassy terrain of your yard in search of the tastiest plant. Grasshoppers eat grass naturally, but they also enjoy leaves and stalks from plants and shrubs. If they choose to stay, they can quickly wipe out a beautiful flower and herb garden.
Grasshoppers and crickets are both omnivores and opportunistic eaters. This means that if they stumble across a dead insect, rodent, or other animal, they will eat it. Grass and plants are their primary sources of nutrition, but everybody likes a little variety from time to time.
Lifespan
Like crickets, grasshoppers are only alive during the warmer months of the year. Their entire lifespan takes approximately four to six weeks. No wonder they are so busy. Being a cricket or grasshopper is not easy since they always have enemies around every corner.
