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Sticker of Desert locust
Bug card No. 0397 of 1,500

Desert locust

Schistocerca gregaria
Eats: PlantsGrasshoppers and cricketsDeserts and dry places6 legs

The desert locust is a big grasshopper that lives in hot, dry lands. Most of the time it lives alone and nobody notices it. But when there are lots of them, they change colour, grow longer wings and fly together in giant swarms.

Lives in
Deserts and dry lands of North and East Africa, Arabia and southwest Asia
Length
4.5 to 9 cm (1.8 to 3.5 in)
Top speed
about 33 km/h (21 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. It does not bite or sting, but big swarms can eat the food that farmers grow.
What does it eat?
It eats almost any green plant it can find. A huge swarm can eat whole fields of crops in a day.
For real!Photo of Desert locust
Picture by Christiaan Kooyman. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Desert locust about 9 cm long (3.5 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
as long as 3 toy building bricks in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 11 secondsmoves 100 times its own body length every second

How big is Desert locust compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

One swarm can have about 150 million locusts in every square kilometre.

2

A swarm can fly up to 150 kilometres in one day, carried along by the wind.

3

A small swarm can eat as much food in one day as about 35,000 people.

4

Young locusts that live in crowds are yellow with black stripes, while lonely ones are green or pale brown.

5

Countries all over the world work together to watch where the locusts are, so they can warn farmers in time.

you asked

Most asked questions about Desert locust

?Is a desert locust dangerous?

It does not hurt people. The problem is that huge swarms eat crops that people need for food.

?How big is a desert locust?

About 4.5 to 9 centimetres long. The females are bigger than the males.

?What is the difference between a locust and a grasshopper?

A locust is a grasshopper that can change into a swarming form when there are lots of them together.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Schistocerca gregaria
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Acrididae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
Lives on
Africa, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Desert locust (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Christiaan Kooyman. Public domain, 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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