"Grig" redirects here. For the fictional Dungeons and Dragons creature, see Fey (Dungeons & Dragons)

Fey (Dungeons & Dragons)

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, Fey is a type of creature, or "creature type". Fey are usually humanoid in form, and are typified as having supernatural abilities and a connection to nature or to some other force or place....

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Grigs are insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s belonging to the orthoptera

Orthoptera

Orthoptera is an order of insects with paurometabolous or incomplete metamorphosis, including the grasshoppers, crickets and locusts.Many insects in this order produce sound by rubbing their wings against each other or their legs, the wings or legs containing rows of corrugated bumps...

n family Prophalangopsidae (formerly known in some classifications as Haglidae). There is only one extant genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, several lesser known genera in Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, and at least 12 fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 genera.

The closest living relatives to the Prophalangopsidae are the family Tettigoniidae

Tettigoniidae

The family Tettigoniidae, known in American English as katydids and in British English as bush-crickets, contains more than 6,400 species. It is part of the suborder Ensifera and the only family in the superfamily Tettigonioidea. They are also known as long-horned grasshoppers, although they are...

 (katydids or bush-crickets), but the evolutionary split occurred more than 230 million years ago in the Permian

Permian

The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian...

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