Ignacio, a resident of Malasaña, was getting ready to make his bed one day at the beginning of September. Almost in the darkness of seven in the morning, he brushed his finger against something that, at first, he did not identify and that made him scared for a moment. That something started jumping around his room every time Ignacio tried to get it out the window. This is how he realized that the first grasshopper had entered his house.
Since then, “two or three come through the window a day“. He checked on their homes in recent days.
Félix Sánchez is dedicated to caring for and arranging gardens. In the last fortnight, he has encountered grasshoppers in five locations in Madrid: Chamartín, Princesa, Tetuán, Torre Arias and Arturo Soria. From this last point, answer by phone.
I have seen grasshoppers in different neighborhoods of Madrid in the last 15 days. In Princesa, Tetuán, Arturo Soria, and Torre Arias.
It’s not common, that’s why I mention it. pic.twitter.com/yowER8L6UM— Félix Sánchez 🌻🦎🦇🦆🌵🌲🌳🍄 (@biocorsario) October 2, 2023
“When you go to the countryside, it is more common to find them, but in the city it is rarer to see them,” he says. On the day in which she encounters an orthopter of this type, she immortalizes it. “In Madrid I have taken photos of five or six species of grasshoppers. Normally, it is always the common lobster, but I have found a rare one and I take a photo of it.” He asked an entomologist friend what species the insects he was encountering belonged to and discovered that they belonged to “the species Chorthippus brunneusa common grasshopperalthough they don’t completely assure you, because it’s not easy to know with a photo.”
“One of the places I have seen them is on a fourteenth floor rooftop.”
Gardener
Actress Prisca Medina asked on Twitter: “Why doesn’t anyone talk about the plague of grasshoppers in the center of Madrid?”. The truth is that this increase in the grasshopper population, of which the Madrid City Council is not aware, cannot be described as a plague. This is certified by RapidControl, an environmental management and control company, which explains that, “during the months of July to September it is common for this type of species to proliferate like many others in the summer seasons.”
Why does no one talk about the plague of grasshoppers in the center of Madrid?
— Prisca Medina (@prismedina_) September 29, 2023
Medina finds one “every two or three days on a wall.” He has been living in the same house in the center of Madrid for two years, but he has never had to kick these insects out of the apartment before. “We always have the windows open because of the heat and they will come in through there, but it is quite common and it catches my attention being such a high floor and being so centrally located,” says this actress, who lives on the sixth floor. Félix Sánchez doubles the bet: “One of the places I have seen them is on a fourteenth floor rooftop.”
Droughts and grasshoppers
These insects move in groups or colonies, which thanks to “certain temperatures and weather conditions remain for short periods in localized areas such as fields and crops,” although “They rarely reach urban centers, as has been the case,” they reflect from RapidControl, from where they recognize that “these days some cases are being echoed in Madrid capital about the appearance of small grasshoppers and some cases of locusts in homes.”
Grasshoppers further indicate, “They can be transported by currents or from green areas, like parks and gardens in search of food.” “In big cities we are used to there being no cycles of nature, but there are,” says Félix Sánchez.
The Agroforestry Sciences researcher at the University of Valladolid Juan José Luque Larena agrees with him. “In the end, nature is getting into the cities and we have to catch up on urban ecology.” He has the answer to the proliferation of these insects: “They are animals that take advantage of periods of drought to disperse, as happens in Africa with locusts, because they are the same group of animals, orthoptera. “What’s happening is that this year, unlike other years, the conditions are very good.”
Will there be grasshoppers in 2024 in Madrid?
“Orthoptera, in their migratory processes, do like birds and they move over long distances and it doesn’t take them long to get into the city,” says Luque Larena.
Dry seasons are cyclical, so it does not seem that grasshoppers will appear again in Madrid in the near future. “It has to do with the year, that it is a very dry year, but surely it will not be repeated in 2024“says the researcher from the University of Valladolid.
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“These cycles have to do with phenomena in the northern hemisphere, but, with the climate changethe magnitudes are exaggerated of what happens, so it can become more extreme,” he adds.
If any animal enters cities before vertebrates, it is insects, he adds, so “there we do have to be a little careful, because Asian giant wasps, ants, etc. enter.” If the insects have already settled in the city, “something will be needed to eat them,” such as geckos or birds. “Cities have been built by people who have left the countryside, but, right now, “we must try to naturalize the cities”insists Juan José Luque Larena.