page_title: Ovipositor
hierarchical_section_title: Ovipositor
caption_attribution_description: Grasshopper ovipositor (close distance view)
context_page_description: The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typically its form is adapted to functions such as preparing a place for the egg, transmitting the egg, and then placing it properly. For insects, the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but for many parasitic species, it is a piercing organ as well.
  Some ovipositors only retract partly when not in use, and the basal part that sticks out is known as the scape, or more specifically oviscape, the word scape deriving from the Latin word scāpus, meaning "stalk" or "shaft".
context_section_description: The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages.  The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typically its form is adapted to functions such as preparing a place for the egg, transmitting the egg, and then placing it properly.  For insects, the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but for many parasitic species (primarily in wasps and other Hymenoptera), it is a piercing organ as well.
  Some ovipositors only retract partly when not in use, and the basal part that sticks out is known as the scape, or more specifically oviscape, the word scape deriving from the Latin word scāpus, meaning "stalk" or "shaft".
caption: Ovipositor of Long-horned Grasshopper (the two cerci are also visible)
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