Southern oak bush-cricket
Meconema meridionale
The southern oak bush-cricket is a small bush-cricket that lives up in the trees. It comes out at night to hunt. Unlike many crickets, it eats other insects instead of leaves.
Lives in
Southern and central Europe, and since 2001 the United Kingdom, in trees
Length
1.4 to 1.7 cm (0.55 to 0.67 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people.
What does it eat?
It hunts small insects, including the tiny caterpillars that tunnel in horse chestnut leaves.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 3 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 1.3 seconds⚡moves 46 times its own body length every second
How big is Southern oak bush-cricket compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Southern oak bush-cricket about 2.8 km/h (1.7 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 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
1
Its body is 14 to 17 millimetres long, without counting its long feelers.
2
It helps horse chestnut trees by eating the leaf miner caterpillars that harm them.
3
It is common and widespread, so it is not in danger.
you asked
Most asked questions about Southern oak bush-cricket
?What does the southern oak bush-cricket eat?
Other small insects. It is a hunter.
?Where does the southern oak bush-cricket live?
In trees in southern and central Europe, and now also in the United Kingdom.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Meconema meridionale
- Group
- Grasshoppers and crickets
- Family
- Tettigoniidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Orthoptera > Tettigoniidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Meconema meridionale (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 Fritz Geller-Grimm. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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