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Sticker of Horse lubber grasshopper
Bug card No. 0748 of 1,500

Horse lubber grasshopper

Taeniopoda eques
Name means: “eques is Latin for horseman, and lubber refers to these grasshoppers not being able to fly”
Eats: A bit of everythingGrasshoppers and cricketsDeserts and dry places6 legs

The horse lubber grasshopper is a big, chunky grasshopper with a shiny black body and bright yellow lines. When it opens its wings, it flashes bright red. Its bold colours tell hungry animals: I taste terrible, leave me alone.

Lives in
Deserts and dry grasslands of the southwestern United States and Mexico
Length
3.3 to 7.1 cm (1.3 to 2.8 in)
Top speed
about 12 km/h (7.5 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
It does not bite people. It tastes bad, so animals that try to eat it quickly spit it out.
What does it eat?
It mostly eats leaves, flowers and seed pods of little desert plants. Sometimes it also nibbles dead insects and animals, spider silk and even poo.
For real!Photo of Horse lubber grasshopper
Picture by Jerry Kirkhart from Los Osos, Calif.. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Horse lubber grasshopper about 7.1 cm long (2.8 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 2 toy building bricks in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 0.3 secondsmoves 47 times its own body length every second

How big is Horse lubber grasshopper compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is one of the biggest grasshoppers in the United States. A big female can be over 7 centimetres long.

2

Most of them cannot fly. All the females and most of the males have wings too short to fly with.

3

At night it climbs to the top of a bush to sleep, safe from hunters on the ground. At sunrise it climbs down to eat.

4

It drinks raindrops.

5

Its black colour helps it soak up the sun and warm up.

you asked

Most asked questions about Horse lubber grasshopper

?How big is the horse lubber grasshopper?

Females are about 4 to 7 centimetres long and males about 3 to 6 centimetres.

?Can the horse lubber grasshopper fly?

Mostly no. Only about one in ten males has wings long enough to fly.

?Why is the horse lubber grasshopper black and yellow?

The bright colours warn animals that it tastes bad, and the black helps it warm up in the sun.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Taeniopoda eques
Named by
Burmeister, 1838
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Romaleidae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Romaleidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Western horse lubber grasshopper

Where the facts come from

  1. Taeniopoda eques (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 Jerry Kirkhart from Los Osos, Calif.. CC BY 2.0, 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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