If it looks like a grasshopper, and jumps like a grasshopper, it might be a cockroach. Last year, Mike Picker from the University of Cape Town discovered a new species of cockroach (Saltoblattela montistabularis) that jumps about using unusually long legs.

Dubbed the “leaproach“, the insect was named one of the top ten new species of 2011. Picker actually found it in 2006 while searching for an unrelated species of fly. It is a close relative of that famous pest, the German cockroach, but its body is very different. Its hind legs are huge, and around 70 per cent of its movements consist of jumps and hops. That makes it unique; all the rest of the 4,000 or so cockroach