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What do Cicadas even do...? Like... do they eat carrion? Your clothes like moths?

Do they spin some kinda silky stuff? What is their purpose?!

Well, they're edible, apparently. They provide a food source for a variety of species (including humans in some parts of the world; apparently they're quite yummy when deep-fried), including burrowing mammals. As adults they feed on tree sap.

I'm confused.

Everything I read about Cicada say they are NOT locust.. but every one around me are saying they ARE locust...

._. so lost. -doesnt want to believe everything she reads on the net, but also understands mom and mom's friend could be wrong-

Cicadas aren't, scientifically speaking, locusts. True locusts are a stress-induced metamorphosis of grasshoppers. (This fact is, in and of itself, somewhat terrifying.)

However, in many regions, people imprecisely refer to cicadas as locusts. It's technically incorrect, but not much more incorrect than saying that an ape is a monkey.

I thought it was the gorilla that wasn't the monkey o3o

Yeah, never eaten one myself, nor do I want to, but the cats that hang around outside have been digging them up and eating them. So much so that I've only seen four or five shells on the trees.

You're not wrong. Gorillas are a kind of ape. (So are gibbons, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans.) Apes and monkeys are both primates, but apes aren't monkeys and monkeys aren't apes.

But in layman's usage, plenty of people use "ape" and "monkey" interchangeably, especially for the smaller ape varieties -- show most people a picture of a gibbon and they'll say "that's a monkey!" even though it's an ape.

So the point of comparison I'm making is that calling a cicada a "locust" is like calling a gibbon a "monkey." Technically wrong, but not too far off, and pretty common.

.... That Gibbon thing is.. SO FLUFFY! o.O

If it doesn't have a tail, it's not a monkey, it's an ape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--szrOHtR6U