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Sticker of Mormon cricket
Bug card No. 0939 of 1,500

Mormon cricket

Anabrus simplex
Eats: A bit of everythingGrasshoppers and cricketsDeserts and dry places6 legs

The Mormon cricket is a big, chunky insect with very long feelers and a shield on its back. It cannot fly, but it walks and hops a long way. Sometimes millions of them march across the land together in huge bands.

Lives in
Western North America, in dry sagebrush country
Length
5 to 8 cm (2 to 3.1 in)
Top speed
about 6 km/h (3.7 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. The long spike on the female's tail is for laying eggs, not for stinging.
What does it eat?
It mostly eats wild flowers and other leafy plants, and also grass and sagebrush. It eats insects too, even other Mormon crickets.
For real!Photo of Mormon cricket
Picture by Taken September 2005 Brian Head, UT. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Mormon cricket about 8 cm long (3.1 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 2.5 toy building bricks in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 0.6 secondsmoves 21 times its own body length every second

How big is Mormon cricket compared to YOU?

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

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Marching bands can travel up to 2 kilometres in a day.

2

Its colour can be black, brown, red, purple or green. Crickets in big swarms are usually darker than the ones living alone.

3

In a marching band, each cricket keeps moving forward so the hungry crickets behind do not eat it.

4

Some of its eggs wait in the ground for up to five years before they hatch.

5

Big bands crossing a road can make it so slippery that it is dangerous for cars.

you asked

Most asked questions about Mormon cricket

?Do Mormon crickets sting?

No. The female's long tail spike is an egg-laying tube that she pushes into the soil, not a stinger.

?Why are they called Mormon crickets?

Because they played a big part in a famous story about Mormon settlers in Utah, when seagulls came and ate the crickets.

?How big is a Mormon cricket?

It can grow to almost 8 centimetres long.

Myth buster

Myth: The Mormon cricket is a real cricket.

Truth: Not really. It is a katydid, also called a bush cricket. The name just stuck.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Anabrus simplex
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Tettigoniidae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Tettigoniidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Mormon cricket (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 Taken September 2005 Brian Head, UT. 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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