Cotton aphid
The cotton aphid is a tiny green bug, only about as big as a sesame seed. It has yellow legs and long yellow feelers. It sucks sweet juice from plants, and it can have an enormous number of babies very fast.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Cotton aphid compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A mother can have babies without a father, up to 85 of them in her short life.
When it is warm, a baby aphid grows up in only about four days.
In Europe there can be nearly fifty generations in a single year.
It can live on around 700 different kinds of plants around the world.
Ladybirds, lacewings and the larvae of hoverflies love to eat it.
Most asked questions about Cotton aphid
?What does the cotton aphid eat?
It sucks juice from plants like melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, peppers and cotton.
?How big is a cotton aphid?
About 2 millimetres long, tiny enough to hide under a leaf.
?What eats cotton aphids?
Ladybirds, lacewings, hoverfly larvae, little bugs and tiny wasps.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Aphis gossypii
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Aphididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Aphididae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Melon aphid, Melon and cotton aphid, Greenfly
Where the facts come from
- Aphis gossypii (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 Alex Abair. CC BY 4.0, 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.
Pharaoh cicada
Spotted lanternfly
Brown marmorated stink bug
Cochineal
Boxelder bug
Western conifer seed bug
Common eastern bumblebee
Tawny crazy ant
Green-head ant
Banded garden spider
Brown-tail moth
Common red soldier beetle