‘Try and tolerate it’: Grasshopper influx not extraordinary, expert says

Las Vegans may have stepped outside their front doors this week and heard an unexpected crunch beneath their feet.

But instead of stepping on a crisp fall leaf, they lifted up their shoe to find the squashed remains of a 1.5-inch grasshopper.

Grasshoppers are becoming more active outside as temperatures warm up, but their numbers around the valley aren’t anything out of the ordinary after an unseasonably wet winter, according to Jeff Knight, the Nevada Department of Agriculture’s state entomologist.

Even the “swarm” of grasshoppers that descended upon the valley in 2019 wasn’t unprecedented.

“We’ve seen these outbreaks clear back in the ‘60s, so it’s not anything new,” Knight said.

People may be seeing more grasshoppers now because the insects are in search of food, but there’s not an abnormal number of grasshoppers hatching, according to Knight.

Grasshoppers become more active once temperatures get above 55 degrees. As temperatures get really hot during the day, the insects tend to shut down and instead come out at night, often congregating around ultraviolet light.

Many may remember when grasshoppers swarmed downtown near the El Cortez, but grasshoppers, like true locals, prefer to stay far from the Strip, and hang around Summerlin, Anthem and North Las Vegas, Knight said.

“They’d really rather be out in the desert,” Knight said.

The exact number of grasshoppers in Las Vegas isn’t tracked by the state because the insects don’t cause damage to crops, although they sometimes make a snack out of people’s backyard gardens, Knight said.

“We don’t really have any good idea of how many (there are), and now they’re all winged, and they’re moving, so it’d be really, really hard to put a number on it,” Knight said.

Grasshoppers aren’t a health concern to animals or people, but if you find them annoying and want to keep them away, Knight says you can turn off your lights outside at night, or change them to a warm bulb or low ultraviolet bulb to prevent them from hanging out near your front door.

“The best thing to do is kind of try and tolerate it,” Knight said.

Contact Taylor Lane at tlane@reviewjournal.com. Follow @Tmflane on Twitter.