Overview
The Great Green Bush-cricket (Tettigonia viridissima) is one of the largest, loudest, and most imposing insects in the European countryside, representing the undisputed giant of the katydid family Tettigoniidae. Reaching lengths of over five centimeters with wings that extend well past its abdomen, this vivid emerald-green master of camouflage inhabits dense hedgerows, bramble thickets, and tall wildflower meadows across Eurasia.
Famed for the deafening, machine-gun-like stridulating song produced by males on warm summer evenings, Tettigonia viridissima is far from a harmless herbivore. Equipped with immense biting jaws and spiny raptorial forelegs, it operates as a ferocious apex predator of the insect undergrowth, actively hunting down caterpillars, aphids, and other grasshoppers with predatory precision.
AT A GLANCE
- Common Name: Great Green Bush-cricket
- Scientific Name: Tettigonia viridissima
- Category: Invertebrates
- Subcategory: Insects
- Size: Body length 28 to 40 mm (1.1 to 1.6 in); females up to 60 mm (2.4 in) including ovipositor; wingspan up to 80 mm
- Weight: 1.5 to 3.0 g
- Lifespan: Adults live 2 to 3 months in late summer/autumn; total lifecycle 1 to 2 years including egg diapause
- Diet: Omnivorous/Predatory: caterpillars, flies, aphids, smaller grasshoppers, slow-moving insects, and soft plant foliage
- Habitat: Dry grasslands, meadows, scrubby hillsides, hedgerows, bramble thickets, woodland clearings, reed beds, and sunny garden borders.
- Range: Native throughout Europe, North Africa, and temperate western and central Asia, from the British Isles and southern Scandinavia eastward to Mongolia.
- Conservation Status: Least Concern (IUCN Red List)
Biology and Physical Characteristics
Tettigonia viridissima possesses an impressive, elongated body clad in brilliant, leaf-like apple-green chitin, often accented with a fine reddish-brown stripe running along the top of the head, thorax, and base of the wings. Its delicate, thread-like antennae are extraordinary, frequently measuring twice the length of its entire body, providing sensitive tactile reception in dense vegetation. Its fully developed, leathery forewings (tegmina) extend far past the tip of the abdomen, enabling strong flight over short distances.
Females possess a colossal, straight or slightly curved, saber-shaped egg-laying tube (the ovipositor) measuring up to 32 millimeters in length. Males lack this sword-like appendage, but possess specialized stridulatory organs on the overlapping bases of their forewings: a modified scraper on one wing rubs rapidly across a file of microscopic teeth on the other, amplifying high-frequency sound through specialized acoustic membranes (the mirror and harp).
Behavior and Ecology
Great green bush-crickets are diurnal and crepuscular ambush predators that stalk through tall herbs and bramble canopies. Unlike herbivorous field grasshoppers, the bush-cricket uses its powerful, sharp mandibles to butcher other insects, including large caterpillars, beetles, and agricultural pests. However, it will also supplement its diet with soft flower blossoms and blackberries.
On hot afternoons and evenings from July to October, males climb to elevated perches on telegraph poles, bramble bushes, or tree branches to sing their territorial song. The sound is an intense, continuous, high-pitched mechanical buzzing rattle that can be heard up to 200 meters away. In autumn, females use their long ovipositors to insert eggs deeply into soil or decaying wood crevices, where they overwinter through multiple years of diapause before hatching as tiny green nymphs.
Conservation and Human Impact
The Great Green Bush-cricket is classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, maintaining abundant, widespread populations across continental Europe. In northwestern Europe, including southern Britain, its range has actively expanded northward in recent decades, driven by warmer summer temperatures associated with regional climate shifts.
The species benefits from the preservation of mature, unmown field margins, overgrown hedgerows, and scrub-grassland mosaics. Widespread pesticide spraying in intensive agricultural zones and excessive roadside hedge flailing during late summer can destroy local populations and eliminate crucial egg-laying habitats.
Interesting Factoid
The female great green bush-cricket possesses a massive saber-like ‘sword’ protruding from her rear that looks like a terrifying stinger, but is actually a harmless ovipositor used to bury eggs deep into the soil.