Oriental mole cricket
This mole cricket digs with mole like front legs, can also fly to lights and swim across water using its dense velvety hairs, unusual for a burrowing insect.
| Where | Damp soil near water, East Asia |
|---|---|
| Size | 20 to 35 mm body length |
| When | March to October |
The Oriental mole cricket is a plump, velvety brown insect covered in short golden hairs, paler beneath, with broad, shovel like front legs adapted for digging and two long tail like cerci at the tip of the abdomen.
It lives in burrows in damp soil near streams, ponds and farmland, feeding on roots, tubers and small invertebrates, and although it spends most of its life underground it can fly to lights and swim on the water surface in summer and autumn.
Traits
Habitat
Wetland
Colour
Brown
Active
Day and night
To people
The powerful digging front legs can pinch slightly if handled, but it does not sting or bite.
Activity through the year
Often confused with
Very similar in shape and habits, but Gryllotalpa mole crickets are told apart mainly by the number of claw like teeth on the digging foreleg, four in the Oriental mole cricket, and this species ranges from eastern Europe to Manchuria rather than further south and east.
Questions
Is the Oriental mole cricket dangerous to people?
The powerful digging front legs can pinch slightly if handled, but it does not sting or bite.
When can you see the Oriental mole cricket?
The Oriental mole cricket can be seen from March to October, by day and at night.
Plate retouched from a museum specimen photo by Natural History Museum, CC0, GBIF Licence
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Crickets and grasshoppers›Gryllotalpidae›Gryllotalpa
Last updated 2026-09-27. Every entry is checked against published sources.