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Sticker of Watanabe's lanternfly
Bug card No. 4634 of 4,939

Watanabe's lanternfly

Pyrops watanabei
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasForests and woods6 legs

Watanabe's lanternfly is a colourful bug from Taiwan. It has a long yellow nose that ends in a little round bulb. Its front wings are mostly white with three black spots, and its belly is red underneath.

Lives in
Only in Taiwan, on trees
Length
4 cm (1.6 in)
Top speed
about 2.2 km/h (1.4 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting.
What does it eat?
It drinks sap from trees, for example the Chinese tallow tree.
For real!Photo of Watanabe's lanternfly
Picture by E.Jones. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Watanabe's lanternfly about 4 cm long (1.6 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 7 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 1.6 seconds

How big is Watanabe's lanternfly compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It lives only in Taiwan and nowhere else in the world.

2

The long "nose" is really a part of its head that sticks out forward.

3

Its back wings can be all white, or white with black tips.

4

A close cousin used to be counted as part of this species, but since 2017 scientists see it as its own species.

you asked

Most asked questions about Watanabe's lanternfly

?Is Watanabe's lanternfly dangerous?

No. It is a harmless sap-drinking bug.

?How big is Watanabe's lanternfly?

It is about 4 centimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Pyrops watanabei
Named by
Matsumura, 1913
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Family
Fulgoridae
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera > Fulgoridae
Lives on
Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Pyrops watanabei (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 E.Jones. 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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