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How to identify it
- Small and gray to light gray, with long wings and clear hind wings. Males are 14 to 19 mm long and females 16 to 23 mm.[1][2]
- The hind shins are usually light blue. The middle of the outer hind thigh carries dark chevrons and light patches, and the upper edge of the thigh has three dark bands.[1][2]
- The surest mark is the male's cercus, the small appendage at the tip of the abdomen. It is forked, and its lower arm curves down to a blunt tip.[1][2]
- Nymphs have a nearly vertical face with a black ridge down the middle and a black band from the bottom of the eye to the mouthparts. Each antenna segment is ringed in white, a cream crescent runs back from below the eye, and the underside is usually white.[1]
Look-alikes
| Look-alike | How to tell them apart |
|---|---|
| Gladston grasshopper (Melanoplus gladstoni) | Its nymphs usually have a bright yellow underside rather than white, and they show up late in the season, when little spur-throated grasshoppers are already adults.[1] |
| Flabellate grasshopper (Melanoplus occidentalis) | Its nymphs appear early in the season alongside little spur-throated nymphs, but their underside is pale gray rather than white.[1] |
| Alpine grasshopper (Melanoplus alpinus) | The male cercus is shaped much the same, but its lower arm curves down more sharply and narrows to a sharp point instead of ending bluntly.[1] |
Where it lives
Grasslands across western North America, from the Canadian provinces to northern New Mexico, including clearings in mountain conifer forest, the parklands of Canada's northern forest, and Colorado mountain grassland up to 10,000 feet. Its northern and mountain range points to a liking for cooler climates. In Nebraska it occurs in the panhandle and the rest of the western third of the state.[1][2]
Biology and life cycle
It has no main food plant. What it eats depends on what grows in its habitat and the time of season, so one population may live mostly on grasses and another mostly on forbs. Recorded foods include blue grama, western wheatgrass, needleandthread, Idaho fescue, bluegrasses, threadleaf and needleleaf sedge, scarlet globemallow, fringed sagewort, broom snakeweed, milkvetches and dandelion.[1][2]
Offered pairs of plants in the lab, it chose dandelion over blue grama, western wheatgrass and alfalfa. A feeding female cut a grass leaf about half an inch above the ground, held the loose piece in her front feet and ate it from the cut end to the tip. Adults also eat fallen leaves and other litter on the ground.[1]
Eggs hatch two to three weeks after those of the bigheaded grasshopper, from late May to mid June on the northern mixed-grass prairie. Nymphs reach adulthood in 27 to 34 days, the fastest of six common Montana rangeland species.[1]
Adults are around from mid July into September or mid October, although each one lives only 15 to 22 days. Females lay curved pods about an inch long holding 10 to 13 light tan eggs, up to an inch deep in clumps of buffalograss. There is one generation a year.[1][2]
It spends the night on the ground or perched head-up 5 to 10 inches high on small shrubs such as silver sagebrush and broom snakeweed, and starts basking about an hour after sunrise. Adults have been found flying into cities and towns, and a dozen have been found on Grasshopper Glacier in Montana.[1]
Damage and signs
- It is an economically important rangeland grasshopper. In 1953 it was the dominant species at 11 of 42 sites sampled on Montana mixed-grass prairie, and in Idaho bunchgrass and sagebrush country outbreaks reach 20 to 40 per square yard. Nebraska's guide notes that it has damaged shortgrass rangeland in parts of its range.[1][2]
- Caged on western wheatgrass, each adult destroyed about 35 mg of dry forage a day, compared with 62 mg for the larger bigheaded grasshopper. In the open it may do even less harm to grass because it also eats forbs. Where it is a minor species it can hold at 0.1 to 0.5 adults per square yard for six years or more.[1]
Health risk
A small plant-feeding grasshopper; none of the sources list any health risk to people or pets.[1][2]
Control
Prevention
Before treating range, compare the forage value of the land with the damage the grasshoppers are likely to do, to judge whether control will pay.[3]
Biological control
Utah State's guide cites Wyoming evidence that outbreaks became more frequent where spraying was most intensive, possibly because heavy insecticide use upsets the natural enemies that keep grasshoppers in check.[3]
Pesticides
Grasshopper control products come as sprays, dusts and baits, and a bait only works when the grasshoppers eat it. Follow the product label.[3]
Common questions
- Why are small gray grasshoppers flying into town?
- The little spur-throated grasshopper is one species recorded flying into cities and towns. It is a small, long-winged gray grasshopper with light blue hind shins.[1][2]
- Does the little spur-throated grasshopper eat grass or weeds?
- Both. Its diet follows what grows where it lives, and populations can feed mainly on grasses or mainly on forbs such as globemallow, fringed sagewort and dandelion.[1][2]
Sources
- USDA Agricultural Research Service, Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory, “Little Spurthroated Grasshopper, Melanoplus infantilis Scudder: species fact sheet, Grasshoppers: Their Biology, Identification and Management.” www.ars.usda.gov/plains-area/sidney-mt/northern-plains-agricultural-research-laboratory/pest-management-research/pmru-docs/grasshoppers-their-biology-identification-and-management/id-tools-apps/fact-sheets/melanoplinae-subfamily/fs-little-spurthroated/ (accessed 2026-11-09)
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, “The Grasshoppers (Orthoptera: Acrididae and Romaleidae) of Nebraska, EB3 (M. L. Brust, W. W. Hoback and R. J. Wright).” extensionpubs.unl.edu/publication/eb3/2009/pdf/view/eb3-2009.pdf (accessed 2026-11-09)
- Utah State University Extension, “Grasshoppers (E. Evans and E. Hodgson, June 2008).” extension.usu.edu/planthealth/research/grasshoppers (accessed 2026-11-09)
- iNaturalist, “Melanoplus infantilis taxon page (order and family).” www.inaturalist.org/taxa/224694 (accessed 2026-11-09)