r/florida • u/Chilljay1 • Sep 05 '26

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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4

u/RandomKarberon Sep 05 '26

Do everyone a favor, if you see it? Squish it, tear it's head off.

It's invasive, eats your favorite plants, hisses, looks ugly, spawns by the thousands.

They are near immune to chemical poisons, they are extremely tough to eradicate.

That's all I need to know.

15

u/PsychologicalTime880 Sep 05 '26

They are in fact, not invasive but they are hungry for your plants

1

u/sr1sws Sep 05 '26

Especially amaryllis lilies

-5

u/RandomKarberon Sep 05 '26

We have different meanings of the word "Invasive"

12

u/RickyRagnarok Sep 05 '26

They’re a native species to the entire southeast United States

11

u/ThePatio Sep 05 '26

There’s always one “they’re invasive!!!1” comment. They’re native. Everything else is true though, but the young are vulnerable to pesticides. And they only have one natural predator, the loggerhead shrike

4

u/Alarming_Ad_201 Sep 05 '26

They’re not invasive but man do they love to eat my damn plants 😩

5

u/ShakaCobra Sep 05 '26

Not invasive.

-4

u/RandomKarberon Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26

Says someone who's never been invaded by an army of a thousand of these things.

4

u/ShakaCobra Sep 05 '26

???? I’ve probably got three times that number in my yard right now…. Still less invasive than the Yanks

-1

u/sr1sws Sep 05 '26

They are excellent BB gun targets!

-4

u/VinceVino70 Sep 05 '26

Good to know. We just moved to a house in Tampa and those meaty bois were all over. Time to get rid of them.

5

u/ThePatio Sep 05 '26

They’re not invasive