Hop-garden earwig
The hop-garden earwig is a reddish brown earwig with yellow legs and very short wings. Like all earwigs, it has a pair of pincers at the end of its body.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It used to be common in the hop gardens of Kent in England, which is how it got its name. Pesticides made it much rarer there.
Today it lives mostly in warm hedges and at the edges of woods, often on field maple trees.
It is one of only four kinds of earwig that have always lived in Britain.
It may have walked to Britain long ago, over land that once joined Britain to Europe where the North Sea is now.
Most asked questions about Hop-garden earwig
?Do earwigs go in your ears?
No. That is just an old story. Earwigs hide in dark cracks, not in ears.
?Where does the hop-garden earwig live?
In Europe, from southern Sweden to Greece. In Britain it lives only in the south-east of England.
Myth buster
Myth: Earwigs crawl into people's ears.
Truth: That is just an old story. Earwigs hide in tight, dark cracks, but they do not go looking for ears.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Apterygida albipennis
- Named by
- Hagenbach, 1822
- Group
- Other insects
- Family
- Forficulidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Dermaptera > Forficulidae
- Lives on
- Europe
- Also known as
- Short-winged earwig
Where the facts come from
- Apterygida media (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 Lucarelli. 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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