The new study, published this week in the journal Biology Letters, confirms those suspicions and manages a rough count of the pallid-winged grasshoppers ( Trimerotropis pallidipennis) that made the pilgrimage. Vegas landmarks such as the shaft of light emanating from the Luxor pyramid’s pinnacle were especially loaded with the insects, causing many to speculate back in 2019 that the bright lights of the desert city had in fact drawn the insects. A new study used weather radar to estimate the swarm’s size and suggests the bugs were summoned by the city’s famously over-the-top illumination, reports Joshua Sokol for the New York Times. That total was the peak of a mass insect invasion that besieged the glitzy Nevada city for weeks.

One night in the summer of 2019, some 46 million grasshoppers hit the Las Vegas Strip.