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Sticker of Water-meadow grasshopper
Bug card No. 4640 of 4,939

Water-meadow grasshopper

Pseudochorthippus montanus
Eats: PlantsGrasshoppers and cricketsPonds, rivers and shores6 legs

The water-meadow grasshopper is a green or green-and-brown grasshopper with dark knees. It loves wet places: soggy meadows, the edges of lakes and rivers, and bogs. It looks so much like its cousin, the meadow grasshopper, that even experts find it hard to tell them apart.

Lives in
Europe and Asia, all the way to Kamchatka, in wet meadows and bogs
Length
1.3 to 2.2 cm (0.51 to 0.87 in)
females are bigger than males
Top speed
about 7.9 km/h (4.9 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting people.
What does it eat?
It eats grasses, reeds and sedges that grow in wet places. If it can choose, it likes grass best.
For real!Photo of Water-meadow grasshopper
Picture by Gilles San Martin. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Water-meadow grasshopper about 2.2 cm long (0.87 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 4 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 0.5 secondsmoves 100 times its own body length every second

How big is Water-meadow grasshopper compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The male sings a song that sounds like "shr-shr-shr", with a pause after each verse. When it is cold, he sings more slowly.

2

If a female does not want a male nearby, she kicks him away with her strong back legs.

3

Its eggs need to stay damp. If the ground gets too dry, fewer babies hatch.

4

It is one of the last grasshoppers to grow up in summer. Most grown-ups are around in early September.

5

In the Alps it lives as high as about 2,480 metres up the mountains.

you asked

Most asked questions about Water-meadow grasshopper

?Where does the water-meadow grasshopper live?

In wet meadows, bogs and on the shores of lakes and rivers across Europe and Asia.

?What does the water-meadow grasshopper eat?

Grasses, reeds and sedges. It likes grass best.

?How big is the water-meadow grasshopper?

Males are about 13 to 16 millimetres long and females about 17 to 22 millimetres.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Pseudochorthippus montanus
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Acrididae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
Lives on
Europe, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Pseudochorthippus montanus (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 Gilles San Martin. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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