European mole cricket

Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa

Name means: “cricket mole, from the Latin words for cricket and mole”

Eats: A bit of everything Grasshoppers and cricketsGardens and meadows6 legs

The European mole cricket is a big, velvety brown cricket that lives underground. Its front legs are wide and strong, like little shovels, just like a mole's paws. It spends almost its whole life digging tunnels in damp soil.

Lives in

Europe, and brought to the eastern United States, in damp fields and vegetable gardens

Length

5 to 7 cm (2 to 2.8 in)

Top speed

about 5.6 km/h (3.5 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Harmless to people. Gardeners do not love it though, because it nibbles on roots and potatoes.

What does it eat?

It eats roots, potatoes and other plant parts underground, and also small soil animals like grubs and worms.

Photo of European mole cricket — Picture by Eszter Kovács. CC BY-SA 2.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

as long as 2 toy building bricks in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 0.6 secondsmoves 22 times its own body length every second

How big is European mole cricket compared to YOU?

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

How fast is it?

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

European mole cricket about 5.6 km/h (3.5 mph)

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

The male sings a soft churring song from a special room in its burrow that makes the sound louder.

In winter its tunnels can go more than a metre deep.

The mother lays 100 to 350 eggs in an underground room and guards them.

A young mole cricket needs one to three years to grow up.

It has wings, but it hardly ever flies because it lives underground.

you asked

Most asked questions about European mole cricket

?Are mole crickets dangerous?

No, they are harmless to people. They only cause trouble for gardeners by nibbling roots and digging up the soil.

?What do mole crickets eat?

Roots, potatoes and other plant parts, plus small animals living in the soil.

?How big is a European mole cricket?

Males are about 5 centimetres long and females about 7 centimetres.

For bug experts

Scientific name: Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa
Named by: Linnaeus, 1758
Group: Grasshoppers and crickets
Family: Gryllotalpidae
Classification: Insecta > Orthoptera > Gryllotalpidae
Lives on: Europe, North America

Where the facts come from

Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa (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 Eszter Kovács. CC BY-SA 2.0 de, 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.