adorable! TIL that there’s a creature called a jerusalem cricket, and that they’re not from jerusalem, and that they’re not crickets! :D
i hope this li’l friend can moult and get their second antenna back 🤞
Aren’t they? They are huge and startling (about 3 inches/7cm long) but I think they’re just precious.
Yes, fingers crossed for a new antenna, I always wonder how they keep them on while digging tunnels with their faces.
First time I saw one of these things I thought it was some kind of giant ant and I was terrified that there would be thousands more of them.
Not cool.
That would be upsetting. Luckily they are fairly solitary.
Is this the bad guy in A Bugs Life?
I believe Hopper is a grasshopper.
Jerusalem Crickets (potato bugs) are: Insecta> Orthoptera > Ensifera > Stenopelmatidae > Stenopelmatinae > Stenopelmatini > Ammopelmatus
And grasshoppers are: Insecta> Orthoptera > Caelifera > Acrididea > Acridomorpha > Acridoidea
So, not unrelated, but you have to go a fair ways back.
Jerusalem crickets can only jump about 4 inches (one inch more than their body length) and mostly just toddle around slowly when they aren’t digging for rotting roots to eat.
