Grasshopper vs Cricket: Antennae, Sound and Behavior Compared

Key differences at a glance

Grasshoppers and crickets both belong to the insect order Orthoptera, meaning “straight wings”. Both have big hind legs for jumping, chewing mouthparts and a life cycle without a pupa, in which young nymphs look like small, wingless adults. Yet the two groups split from each other more than 250 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs.

Grasshoppers, including locusts such as the desert locust, make up the suborder Caelifera, with about 11,000 species. Crickets belong to the suborder Ensifera, along with katydids (called bush crickets in Europe), camel crickets and mole crickets. Familiar crickets include the European field cricket, the North American field crickets and the house cricket.

Antennae: short horns vs long horns

Old books called grasshoppers “short-horned” and crickets and katydids “long-horned” Orthoptera, and the antennae remain the best field clue. A grasshopper’s antennae are thick and usually shorter than half its body, with fewer than about 30 segments. A cricket’s antennae are as fine as hairs and are made of many more tiny segments, often reaching beyond the end of the abdomen.

Crickets use these long feelers to find their way in the dark, sensing walls, food and other crickets. Grasshoppers, which are active in daylight, rely more on their large eyes. Size can mislead you, because a young cricket nymph and an adult grasshopper may be the same length, but the antennae give the answer at any age.

How they make sound

Both groups sing by stridulation, which means rubbing one body part against another, but they do it differently.

Most singing grasshoppers rub a row of tiny pegs on the inside of each hind leg against a hard vein on the folded forewing, like a bow on a violin. Their songs are often soft buzzes, clicks or rasps, and some grasshoppers also make crackling sounds with their wings in flight.

Crickets sing wing on wing. A male raises his forewings and scrapes a toothed vein, called the file, on one wing across a hard edge, the scraper, on the other. A thin, drum-like area of the wing amplifies the sound into a clear, musical chirp or trill. Each species has its own rhythm, and in many crickets the chirp rate rises with temperature. Learn more in why do crickets chirp? and can crickets tell the temperature?

In both groups it is usually the males that sing, mainly to attract females and warn off rival males.

Where their ears are

Grasshoppers and crickets both hear with tympanal organs: thin membranes stretched over air sacs, which vibrate in response to sound. In grasshoppers these ears sit on the sides of the first segment of the abdomen, hidden under the wings. In crickets and katydids they are on the front legs, just below the knee joint, where they appear as small oval patches or slits.

Day vs night, plants vs everything

Grasshoppers are typically sun lovers. They bask in the morning to warm up and are most active on warm, sunny afternoons in meadows, fields and dry grassland. They are mainly herbivores, eating grasses and leafy plants, as explained in what do grasshoppers eat?

Most crickets are nocturnal. They spend the day in burrows, cracks, leaf litter or under stones and come out at dusk to feed and sing. Crickets are omnivores and scavengers: they eat leaves, seeds, fruit and fungi, but also small insects, insect eggs and dead animals.

Body shape, wings and egg-laying tubes

A grasshopper’s body is tall and narrow, flattened from side to side, and its wings fold over its back like a pitched roof. A typical cricket is flatter and more cylindrical, with its forewings lying flat on top of the body and two long tail feelers called cerci at the rear.

Females differ clearly at the tip of the abdomen. A female cricket has a long, needle-like ovipositor (egg-laying tube) for pushing eggs into soil or plant stems. A female grasshopper has a short ovipositor made of four hard valves that dig a hole in the ground, where she lays her eggs in a pod.

Which is bigger, and which jumps better?

Sizes overlap. Most grasshoppers of Europe and North America are about 1.5–7 cm (0.6–2.8 in) long, and some tropical species are larger. Most true crickets are smaller, around 1–3 cm (0.4–1.2 in); a house cricket is about 1.6–2.1 cm (0.6–0.8 in). The largest true crickets, the bull crickets of Africa and Asia, reach about 5 cm (2 in).

Grasshoppers are generally the stronger jumpers. A large grasshopper can jump about 1 m (3 ft 3 in), roughly 20 times its length, by storing energy in its hind legs, as explained in how far can a grasshopper jump? Many crickets jump well too, but they more often run or hide.

Where katydids and locusts fit

Katydids look like green grasshoppers but are actually closer relatives of crickets. They have very long antennae, sing with their wings at night and have flat, sword-shaped ovipositors. Even the Mormon cricket of the western United States is really a large flightless katydid.

Locusts, on the other hand, are true grasshoppers. They are the few grasshopper species that change color and behavior when crowded and form swarms. No cricket forms swarms like a locust, although Mormon crickets can form huge marching bands.

Can grasshoppers and crickets interbreed?

No. Grasshoppers and crickets are separated by more than 250 million years of evolution, much more than separates a cat from a dog. They have different songs, ears and mating behavior and cannot produce offspring together. Even within each group, related species usually keep apart because females respond only to the song of their own species, so each kind of grasshopper or cricket can be recognized by ear by an experienced listener.