The Mormon cricket (Anabrus simplex) is a large insect that can grow to almost three inches (seven centimeters) in length. They live throughout western North America in rangelands dominated by sagebrush and forbs.
Despite its name, the Mormon cricket is actually a shieldbacked katydid, not a cricket. It has not yet been determined whether this insect is a Mormon.
The Mormon cricket is flightless, but capable of traveling up to two kilometers a day in its swarming phase, during which it is a serious agricultural pest and traffic hazard.
Read more about Mormon Cricket: Appearance, Life Cycle, Swarming, Food, Control, Historical
Famous quotes containing the words mormon and/or cricket:
“If you excommunicate one of us there will be 10 more to step up and take her place. Excommunicate those 10 and there will be 100 to take their places.”
—Lynn Knavel Whitesides, U.S. Mormon feminist. As quoted in the New York Times, p. 7 (October 2, 1993)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)