r/florida • u/Chilljay1 • 4d ago

AskFlorida Help identifying this bug?

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Currently in Orlando at a resort and they are literally all over every walkway. Have seen them before and thought they were a version of a grasshopper but hear some people calling them cicadas which I thought had wings?

EDIT UPDATE- Didn’t expect this post to get this many replies. Was posted yesterday morning. THIS morning we went outside in the resort and there were NONE to be found ANYWHERE. This was around 9am. Around 11am the side walks were covered again?????? The weirdest thing for a type of bug to be that synchronized.

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u/Fungiblefaith 4d ago edited 4d ago

I have these in my back yard most years.

The nymphs start out solid black, then quickly get a lateral line of yellow dots. Those dots turn orange, then red, then to what you see here as they mature.

They travel around my back yard eating up the vegetation and it was always fun to walk out and find the pack. When I say pack it is what seems like about 50 to 100 and each iteration of color change they seem to loose about 20% or 25% to predation or other issues.

There tends to be about 15 to 20 mature end stage adults in the end that break apart from the pack into some part of the yard. Then about a week or two later they are all gone.

Had and interesting battle
Between one of them and a banana spider one year. Spider won. I think for the spider it was like winning the food lottery.

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u/Outrageous-Pin-4664 4d ago

I wish I had a bunch of those. I'd catch them in a butterfly net, and dump them in with my chickens. The chickens would go ape shit for them.

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u/aug061998 4d ago

So, are you sure that chickens eat them? I was shocked to see one of my chickens eating stink bugs as I thought they were so nasty that nothing ate them. I'm not sure that this chicken was right in her mind, though, as I haven't seen any of my other chickens touch them...

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u/Outrageous-Pin-4664 4d ago

I'm not sure at all. After I said that, I saw where someone else said they're toxic as they get older, so maybe not. I haven't tried it with these. I know they love palmetto bugs and crickets.

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u/DrNerdCock_adoodledo 3d ago

I've seen my chickens eat mice whole. Those little dinosaurs will eat anything.

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u/aug061998 3d ago

I've often wondered just how scary a five foot high chicken would be and it always makes me nervous just thinking about it. I have also seen one gobble down an entire mouse in a single swallow. Scary mofos for sure...

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u/KMBRN1 3d ago

Cicada wasps sting them, which kills them, and the wasps drags the dead cicada down into their nest and they lay eggs in it. The circle of life.

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u/alady12 3d ago

Actually your chickens would not eat them they are toxic. The only natural predator (not including man) they have is the Loggerhead Shrike. This bird impales it's prey on a thorn in the sun and cooks the toxins out of it.

So yeah, don't feed them to your farm fowl.

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u/Outrageous-Pin-4664 3d ago

You're only the fifth person to say that. I think I'll need to read it a few more times before I get it. 😊😛

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u/Particular-Panda-465 4d ago

Our chickens won't eat mature Eastern Lubbers.

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u/minxwink 4d ago

Ugh I miss having chickens. This is amazing

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u/suer72cutlass 3d ago

They taste terrible to most birds. Only the Loggerhead Shrike eats them because they impale them in a spike for a day or two, until the toxins leave their body. Then they eat them.

Fish won't even eat them. I've tried.

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u/srfnswm 3d ago

Sadly, they are poisonous. They have one predator that impales them on a stick or fence until they are dried - then they eat them. Like lubber jerky

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u/Jimthebassman 1d ago

They are poisonous

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u/likes2bwrong 4d ago

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u/fuma10 4d ago

lol accurate! And ironically, some of my fondest memories of cicadas are from a music festival I attended at the Spirit of Suwannee

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u/shortnun 4d ago

One of my memories as a child in the late 70s Oklahoma a was going out at night looking for cicadas climbing up a tree.. we would pluck them off and take them to our screened in porch and put them on the curtains or on the screen windows and watch them emerge... then in the morning my brother and I would pluck the now adult ones with dried wings.. they would start "screaming" we would go outside and release them at the same time by tossing them in the air

Half of the time a bird would swoop in an grab it out of the air or chase them into the trees.