Giant Mormon Crickets!

If you've ever noticed a massive gray insect on the trails up Cache Creek or in the sagebrush flats of Grand Teton National Park, you might just be looking at a mormon cricket (Anabrus simplex)!  These giant insects are actually a type of shieldbacked katydid and can grow to 3 inches long.

Mormon crickets are harmless to people, that sharp looking stinger in the photo is called an ovipositor, and is used to lay up to 100 eggs in the soil.  They are largely plant eaters but will eat other insects including other Mormon Crickets!

In most years mormon crickets are scattered throughout their preferred habitat, providing food for an assortment of birds and other animals including coyotes and foxes.  However, they occasionally swarm in large numbers and can cause problems for humans.  Earlier this year one of our naturalists observed massive numbers of crickets smashed on the road near Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, so many that the road became slick!  In situations like this swarms can devastate agricultural crops as well.

Fortunately swarms are rare, instead we have opportunities to enjoy this "charismatic minifauna" along with the larger species we are more accustomed to.  Click below to watch a short video from Naturalist Sarah Ernst about the Mormon Cricket.

[Misty_PlayzOfficial]

My dogs Kane Dixie and Bobby plus the frog that was on my window I tamed be like “MAN THERES A BUFFET HERE DIG IN”

[marcychester]

Hellll to the naw, to the naw, naw nawww.

[davidhollingsworth]

I heard these things can deliver a WICKED bite...I know katydids are voracious predators which not many insects want to take on.

[windigo]

My dog Larry would devour dozens of these at a time, throw up, then go at it again. This was when they were swarming across the road in rural Utah near Eureka, Utah. I miss Larry the Lab.

[Serge]

How are they harmless? They can eat people’s crop and even eat each other since they are cannibal…