Grasshopper swarms have Las Vegas feeling antsy – CNET

The Great Grasshopper Invasion of 2019 has begun.

Thanks to unusually wet weather a few months back, Las Vegas is being inundated by grasshoppers as the insects migrate across Nevada. But numbers aside, there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Nevada state entomologist Jeff Knight told CBS that the number of "adult pallid-winged grasshoppers traveling north to central Nevada is not unprecedented and they pose no danger." (Disclosure: CBS is the parent company of CNET.)

Grasshoppers are usually attracted to ultraviolet light sources. But considering the amount of neon and other bright lights at casinos that keep Las Vegas humming with tourists at all hours, it's not a big surprise that grasshoppers would be attracted to those lights as well.

Knight also added that grasshoppers don't carry disease, don't bite and probably won't damage anybody's yard for the few weeks of the migration.

But that doesn't mean large swarms of grasshoppers don't creep out the tourists trying their luck in Sin City.

"It was crazy. We didn't even want to walk through there. Everybody was going crazy," Diana Rodriquez told CBS affiliate KLAS on Saturday. "We were wondering, like, what's going on."

Here are a few videos of the 2019 grasshopper invasion circulating on social media, if you dare to watch.