We had an email into the wales.nature@bbc.co.uk inbox this morning from our regular contributor Mike Davies, who asked us whether this insect is a grasshopper or a cricket.
(By the way, I'm James McLaren, covering for our usual blogger Gull)
Well, insects are as confusing, if not more so, than Little Brown Jobs, the annoying birds who look identical and can only be told apart by their songs. So I got in touch with the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff and spoke to entymological expert John Deeming.
"The main difference to look for is in the length of the antennae," he explains. "Grasshoppers have short antennae, sometimes only as long as their head. Crickets have much longer ones, sometimes longer than the length of their whole body.
"There are two types of cricket, the Gryllidae, known as 'true crickets' which look quite like grasshoppers, and the Tettigoniidae which are known as 'bush crickets'. If you really want to see the differences, search on the web for images of Acrididae, the grasshoppers, Gryllidae and Tettigoniide.
"I'm afraid colours are no help in identifying a grasshopper from a cricket!"
So there we go then, Mike's insect is a grasshopper, with its short antennae. Hope that helps all us budding entymologists.
