Cotton seed bug
Oxycarenus hyalinipennis
The cotton seed bug is a tiny black bug with see-through wings. It is smaller than a grain of rice. Its babies are colourful, with pink or red bellies.
Lives in
Southern Europe, Africa, tropical Asia and Central and South America, and now the Caribbean islands, in cotton fields
Length
3.8 to 4.3 mm (0.15 to 0.17 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. Farmers do not like it, because it harms cotton plants.
What does it eat?
It sucks juice from cotton plants, its favourite, and also from okra, hibiscus and other mallow plants.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍽️could run across a dinner table in 30 seconds
How big is Cotton seed bug compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
Cotton seed bug about 0.12 km/h (0.07 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
The males are a little smaller than the females.
2
A whole new family can grow up in about twenty days, so there can be three or four families in one year.
3
A female lays about twenty eggs.
4
In the last thirty years it has spread to islands in the Caribbean Sea.
you asked
Most asked questions about Cotton seed bug
?What does the cotton seed bug eat?
Mostly cotton plants, but also okra, hibiscus and other plants of the mallow family.
?How big is the cotton seed bug?
Only about 4 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Oxycarenus hyalinipennis
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Lygaeidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Lygaeidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, North America
Where the facts come from
- Oxycarenus hyalinipennis (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 Julieta Brambila. CC BY 3.0 us, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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