Katydids are a large group of insects in the order Orthoptera, related to grasshoppers and crickets. There are over 6,400 of the katydids worldwide and they live on every continent except Antarctica. This very large family of insects is broken into subfamilies and genera, some of which are extinct.
Their actual name is the longhorn grasshopper, even though they are more closely related to crickets because of the way they make their calls. Grasshoppers rub their leg on their wing to make a call, while crickets and katydid rub their wings together to make a call.
Katydid look a lot like leaves. This helps them camouflage because they don't move a lot, they are very stationary creatures. Even as they age they keep their camouflage looking like an old leaf that has slowly begun to rot. In their adult life they look like a healthy green leaf, and how brown their back-end is tells how much they are aged. They only get to live six months in their adult stage.
Katydids are a little strange because they taste with their feet. They hear with their front knees and they smell with their antenna. They throw their feces as far away so that predators that can smell them out are misled and don't reach near them. Katydid don't really hop like other grasshoppers and crickets but they are capable of flight.
Katydid eat plants but mostly in nature things try to eat them.
