Trust me, they are different. The confusion arises because even people who know the difference between the two will still call a cicada a locust, for some reason. I grew up calling them locusts. As a kid we'd go around circling trees looking for the dried shells they'd leave on the trunks of trees when they outgrew their "skins" and shed them (rather like a snake). We'd stick them on our shirts (the feet will cling to fabric) to see who could find the most. (Yeah, we did weird things as kids, lol!)
I'd never been in an honest-to-goodness cicada swarm, though, until a few years ago. I was visiting a small town and the cicadas were flying everywhere. Imagine Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds," only with cicadas. That's how bad they were. They're pretty dumb, so they fly right into you. And, they're as ugly as sin, with big, red, beady eyes.
https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/what-do-cicadas-eat/
Interesting, thanks. They do seem to be quite a bit different than locusts after all.
Trust me, they are different. The confusion arises because even people who know the difference between the two will still call a cicada a locust, for some reason. I grew up calling them locusts. As a kid we'd go around circling trees looking for the dried shells they'd leave on the trunks of trees when they outgrew their "skins" and shed them (rather like a snake). We'd stick them on our shirts (the feet will cling to fabric) to see who could find the most. (Yeah, we did weird things as kids, lol!)
I'd never been in an honest-to-goodness cicada swarm, though, until a few years ago. I was visiting a small town and the cicadas were flying everywhere. Imagine Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds," only with cicadas. That's how bad they were. They're pretty dumb, so they fly right into you. And, they're as ugly as sin, with big, red, beady eyes.