Australian plague locust
The Australian plague locust is a brown or green grasshopper with reddish legs and an X mark on its back. Most of the time it lives quietly in the grasslands of inland Australia. But after big rains, millions of them can join together into huge flying swarms.
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Fun facts
Swarms can fly up to 20 kilometres in a day and travel as far as 800 kilometres, riding on hot winds.
As many as a million eggs can be laid in one hectare of soil, which is about the size of a big football field.
The mother drills a hole in the ground with the tip of her tummy and lays 30 to 50 eggs in a little pod.
Young locusts cannot fly yet, so they march together in groups called bands, up to 500 metres a day.
It is the most damaging locust in Australia.
Most asked questions about Australian plague locust
?What is a locust?
A locust is a kind of grasshopper that can gather into giant swarms when there is lots of food.
?Why do locusts swarm?
After heavy rains there is lots of fresh food, so many more locusts grow up and they travel together to find new food.
?How big is the Australian plague locust?
It is about 2 to 4.5 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Chortoicetes terminifera
- Group
- Grasshoppers and crickets
- Family
- Acrididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Australian plague locust (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 division, CSIRO. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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