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Sticker of Lamenting grasshopper
Bug card No. 2485 of 4,939

Lamenting grasshopper

Eyprepocnemis plorans
Eats: PlantsGrasshoppers and cricketsPonds, rivers and shores6 legs

The lamenting grasshopper is a greyish brown grasshopper that lives in wet places like reed beds and marshes. Its name means weeping, and it has a dark streak running down each eye. Its back legs have pretty stripes of green, blue and yellow.

Lives in
Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe, in reed beds, marshes and along rivers
Length
4.5 cm (1.8 in)
the girls; boys are a little smaller
Top speed
about 11 km/h (6.8 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting people.
What does it eat?
It eats mostly grasses and sedges.
For real!Photo of Lamenting grasshopper
Picture by Francesc Xavier Yuste Medina, User: Xyuste. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Lamenting grasshopper about 4.5 cm long (1.8 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 8 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 0.3 secondsmoves 68 times its own body length every second

How big is Lamenting grasshopper compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The mother lays a pod of eggs in the ground, and the babies hatch in spring.

2

The babies shed their skin five times, looking more like the grown-ups each time.

3

It is shy and a good flier.

4

In Italy it is spreading further north, maybe because the weather is getting warmer.

5

In some places many grown-ups survive the winter.

you asked

Most asked questions about Lamenting grasshopper

?Why is it called the lamenting grasshopper?

Lamenting means crying, and its scientific name plorans means weeping. The dark streak down its eye looks a bit like a tear.

?Where does the lamenting grasshopper live?

In wet places like reed beds and marshes in Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Eyprepocnemis plorans
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Acrididae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
Lives on
Africa, Asia, Europe

Where the facts come from

  1. Eyprepocnemis plorans (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 Francesc Xavier Yuste Medina, User: Xyuste. 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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Honey jarfor grown-ups