New Forest cicada
The New Forest cicada is a dark grey or black cicada with orange rings around its body and clear, see-through wings. It is the only cicada that lives naturally in England. It is very rare now, and people all over have been listening hard to find it.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its young ones live underground for four to ten years before they climb out as grown-ups.
The male's song is so high that to our ears it sounds like a soft hiss of radio static.
Nobody has seen or heard one in Britain since 1996. Thousands of people even used a special phone app to listen for it.
It also disappeared once before, from 1941 to 1961, and then came back.
Scientists found out that it is really a group of about ten different cicadas that can be told apart by their songs.
Most asked questions about New Forest cicada
?Where can you find the New Forest cicada?
In many parts of Europe and Asia. In England it has not been found since 1996.
?What does the New Forest cicada sound like?
A high, buzzing hiss, a bit like static on an old radio.
?Why is the New Forest cicada rare?
It has disappeared from many places in Western Europe, and people are now trying to bring it back to England.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cicadetta montana
- Named by
- Scopoli, 1772
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Cicadidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Cicadidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Cicadetta montana (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Fritz Geller-Grimm. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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