Bug card No. 1435 of 1,500
Western cicada killer
Sphecius grandis
Name means: “grandis is Latin for large”
It looks like a giant yellowjacket, but it is calm and not looking for trouble. Its name tells you its job: it hunts cicadas to feed its babies.
Lives in
The western United States, Mexico and Central America
Length
3 to 5 cm (1.2 to 2 in)
What does it eat?
The mother catches cicadas and carries them to her nest. Her babies hatch and eat the cicadas she left for them.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 8 grains of rice in a row🧱as long as 1.5 toy building bricks in a row⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 9.7 seconds⚡moves 220 times its own body length every second
How big is Western cicada killer compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
Western cicada killer about 39 km/h (24 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
A mother wasp catches four or more cicadas for her nest and lays an egg with them.
2
The females are much heavier than the males, more than twice as heavy.
3
The males come out first, but they live for only a couple of days.
4
It can keep its body warm or cool by moving heat from its chest to its tummy, so it can patrol its spot on hot days.
5
Many wasps nest close together in one place, like a little wasp village.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Sphecius grandis
- Named by
- Say, 1824
- Group
- Wasps and hornets
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Sphecius grandis (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 Say, Thomas. Public domain, 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.
European hornet
Northern giant hornet
Bald-faced hornet
Red velvet ant
Eastern cicada killer
Asian hornet
Giant red velvet mite
Saddle-backed bush-cricket
Desert locust
Arizona bark scorpion
Antarctic midge
Himalayan giant honey bee_(6026021225).jpg){kind=link}