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Sticker of Hairy scale-cricket
Bug card No. 2159 of 4,939

Hairy scale-cricket

Arachnocephalus vestitus

The hairy scale-cricket is a small cricket that lives near the warm Mediterranean Sea. It belongs to the scaly crickets, which are covered in tiny scales. You can find it along sunny coasts from Spain all the way to the Black Sea.

Lives in
Coasts and islands around the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea
Top speed
about 3 km/h (1.9 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is a small cricket that cannot hurt you.
What does it eat?
Nobody has written down exactly what it eats. Small crickets like it usually nibble bits of plants and tiny scraps of food.
For real!Photo of Hairy scale-cricket
Picture by Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It lives in many countries, from Spain and Portugal to Greece, Romania and Ukraine.

2

It is found on lots of islands too, like Crete, Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands.

3

Scaly crickets have bodies covered in tiny scales, a bit like the dust on a butterfly's wings.

you asked

Most asked questions about Hairy scale-cricket

?Where does the hairy scale-cricket live?

Along the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.

?Is the hairy scale-cricket dangerous?

No. It is a small harmless cricket.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Arachnocephalus vestitus
Group
Grasshoppers and crickets
Family
Mogoplistidae
Classification
Insecta > Orthoptera > Mogoplistidae
Lives on
Europe

Where the facts come from

  1. Arachnocephalus vestitus (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 from Namur, Belgium. CC BY-SA 2.0, 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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