Soot sprite
The soot sprite is a tiny, almost round bug, as shiny and black as a drop of ink. In the sun it can glimmer green, blue or bronze. The edges of its tummy are yellow.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Soot sprite compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
A big shield on its back covers its whole tummy, so it looks a bit like a little beetle.
It spends the winter as a young bug and becomes a grown-up in May or June.
It lives in most of Europe but not in Britain or Ireland.
It likes warm, sunny places and can live in the Alps up to 1,000 metres high.
Most asked questions about Soot sprite
?How big is the soot sprite?
Only about 4 to 5 millimetres, so it is smaller than a pea.
?What does the soot sprite eat?
Plant juice from pea family plants like vetch, trefoil and alfalfa.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Coptosoma scutellatum
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Plataspidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Plataspidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Coptosoma scutellatum (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 Hectonichus. 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.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Pharaoh cicada
Spotted lanternfly
Brown marmorated stink bug
Cochineal
Boxelder bug
Western conifer seed bug
Iron cross blister beetle
Pioneer white
Desert subterranean termite
Blue-winged grasshopper
Saddle-backed bush-cricket
Granulated thick-tailed scorpion