'The Argentine stem weevil, the common black beetle and couch mites are much bigger concerns and we need to apply insecticides to control those. 'The mole crickets can disrupt the playing surface so we've got to keep an eye on things like that, but they're not really a problem here,' Mr Swinstead said. Ivan Swinstead, superintendent of the Tea Tree Gully Golf Course, said mole crickets were sometimes visible on the greens after rain but he did not usually think of the insect as a pest, even though it could make some mess. 'They're quite extraordinary and they're incredibly important, as are many of the animals that live in our soil.'

'Their front end looks like a digger or front-end loader with huge legs for pushing around the soil and the back is this big, round, bulbous thing so they look like an alien. 'Sometimes you also see them wandering across tennis courts or golf courses and yesterday's rains would have flushed some out into the open in many parts of Adelaide. 'Because they spend most of their time underground they're rarely encountered, except for when you're digging around in the ground and occasionally after really heavy rain like we had yesterday the tunnels and the little amphitheatres the males sing from get flooded out and the males are pushed up to the surface.

'They can be incredibly loud and they're the cricket that, when you stomp on the ground, chirping.

'The males will dig a tunnel which acts pretty much like an amphitheatre and on wet nights like we had last night, the males will stick their back legs out of this amphitheatre and stridulate, make loud, chirping noises to attract a female. they're one of our most amazing crickets and they're the sound of summer really,' Professor Daniels said. The mole cricket is an odd-looking, burrowing, brown insect that is about four centimetres long with characteristic shovel-like forelimbs, beady eyes and a soft abdomen.īiology professor Chris Daniels, from the University of South Australia, said the mole cricket was 'a little unattractive' but it was harmless and excellent for aerating soils.

'It had wings and claws and it was scurrying across the floor and we noticed it because of our dog who looked a little bemused by it.' They occasionally become sufficiently abundant to cause heavy damage to roots and basal parts of rice plants growing in raised nursery beds or upland conditions. 'It was a hairy little creature, it looked part rodent, part insect and it was a bit like something out of Prometheus. They feed on the underground parts of almost all-upland crops. 'It looked really scary and when I squashed it with a shoe I felt like I'd killed a mammal, not an insect, and I was mortified for ages afterwards,' Ms Novakovic said. Startled Wynn Vale resident Pauline Novakovic squashed the 'bizarre-looking' creature with her shoe after being 'freaked out' by the sight of the insect on the slate floor of her house. The tawny is the most destructive species of mole cricket since it feeds almost exclusively on the roots and shoots of grass.

Mole cricket