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Sticker of Garden locust
Bug card No. 1797 of 4,939

Garden locust

Acanthacris ruficornis
Eats: PlantsGrasshoppers and cricketsGardens and meadows6 legs

The garden locust is a big grasshopper from Africa. It belongs to the bird grasshoppers, a group of large grasshoppers that are good fliers. Like all grasshoppers, it has strong back legs for jumping.

Lives in
Africa and southern Europe
Top speed
about 10 km/h (6.2 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It only eats plants. If you hold it, mind its spiky back legs when it kicks.
What does it eat?
Like other grasshoppers, it eats leaves and other plant parts.
For real!Photo of Garden locust
Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It belongs to the bird grasshoppers, a group in the big family of short-horned grasshoppers.

2

There are two kinds of it, and the name garden locust belongs to one of them.

3

It lives in Africa and also in southern Europe.

you asked

Most asked questions about Garden locust

?Where does the garden locust live?

In Africa and southern Europe.

?What does the garden locust eat?

Plants, like other grasshoppers.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Acanthacris ruficornis
Named by
Fabricius, 1787
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Acrididae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
Lives on
Africa, Europe

Where the facts come from

  1. Acanthacris ruficornis (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 Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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