Giant grasshopper
The giant grasshopper is the biggest grasshopper in Australia. It is brown or greyish green, with black dots on its front wings. It likes to be alone and hides so well that it looks just like a stem or a leaf.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Giant grasshopper compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The girls are bigger than the boys and can be as long as a grown-up's finger.
It has orange and red spines on its legs that it uses to fight off enemies.
The mother digs a deep hole in wet soil and lays up to 150 eggs at the bottom.
She plugs the hole with foam to keep the eggs moist during the dry season.
The babies wait for the first big rain before they crawl out of the ground.
Most asked questions about Giant grasshopper
?How big is the giant grasshopper?
Girls grow to about 60 to 75 millimetres long, and boys to about 45 to 55 millimetres.
?What does the giant grasshopper eat?
It eats the leaves of bushes such as hibiscus, and palm leaves too.
?Is the giant grasshopper dangerous?
No. It is harmless to people.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Valanga irregularis
- Named by
- Walker, 1870
- Group
- Grasshoppers and crickets
- Family
- Acrididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Giant valanga, Hedge grasshopper
Where the facts come from
- Valanga irregularis (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 Quartl. 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.
Desert locust
House cricket
Parktown prawn
Eastern lubber grasshopper
Australian plague locust
Mormon cricket
Eastern harvestman
Japanese giant mantis
Grey field slug
Eastern tailed-blue
Mediterranean mantis
Mexican bean beetle