30 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Grasshopper | Amazing Facts 4U
- The grasshopper is an insect that belongs to the order Orthoptera. There are about 11000 different types of grasshopper which are found in every part of the globe except north and south Poles.
- The ancestors of our modern-day grasshoppers evolved well over 200 millions year ago. They are believed to be older than dinosaurs.
- In fact, grasshoppers and locusts are the same things. Locusts are actually species of short-horned grasshoppers, they are notorious for traveling in large swarms.
- Grasshoppers grow to around 2 inches (5 cm), with some growing as big as 5 inches (12.5 cm). Females are usually larger than males.
- Their body structures consist of the head, thorax, abdomen, and six legs along with two pairs of wings.
- They have two big eyes, on each side of their head. They have another two on the bottom of each antenna and the last eye is between the two antennas. This enables grasshoppers to see in all directions.
- The limbs are powerful enough to jump, lifting their body weight up to 20 times of the total body length. They can jump about 25cm high and around 1 meter long.
- Grasshoppers are able to jump this far because they have powerful six-jointed legs that use a catapult design. A grasshopper will bend its hind legs at the knee, thereby slowly contracting its big flexor muscles. This potential energy is stored in a piece of cuticle in the knee, just like a spring. In order to jump, the grasshopper then relaxes its muscles, which causes the cuticle to release the stored energy catapulting the grasshopper into the air.
- Grasshoppers are diurnal, which means they rest at night and are active during the day. This is largely because grasshoppers need to absorb sunlight in order to raise their body temperature so that they have their required energy.
- The amazing fact is that grasshoppers have their auditory organs in an unusual location on the abdomen on each side of the first abdominal segment, tucked under the wings. These membranes vibrate in response to sound waves. They can detect rhythm and intensity, but it cannot hear the pitch of a sound.
- Each grasshopper sub-family can generate different tunes or songs by clapping their wings in the air, while others would rub their hind legs to produce sounds.
- Usually, the males will sing most of the time to attract females. Each species produces a characteristic rhythm that distinguishes its song from others, and enables courting males and females of a given species to find each other.
- Grasshoppers are often colored in a way that camouflages them in their local habitat, The main colors of Grasshoppers are brown, gray, and green.
- They will grow fast in the in the grass which is their preferred plant to eat.
- The spring would be the perfect perhaps the best time for them to grow and invade our world.if it is too hot, or too cold, grasshopper will never have the chance to live.
- They mate at start of summer.The hatched eggs will hibernating and going through autumn, winter, and early summer before turning into nymphs. (About 10 months).
- These young grasshoppers don’t have any wings which develop after 10 days.
- Within 30 days, the young grasshopper will evolve into an adult, and about 15 days later they are ready to mate again.
- On an average , a grasshopper can live up to 1 year of age.
- Grasshoppers love to eat crops, such as wheat, barley, oats, corn etc.
- Depending on which species some would be a threat to crops while other types would only have appetite on grasses.
- Grasshoppers also migrate during the colder months of the year. They tend to migrate in large groups, or swarms. Migration enables grasshoppers to find better sources of food during the winter months when crops are scarcer. Incredibly, grasshoppers can remain in the air for as long as three days without landing.
- Locusts are most destructive in farming regions of Africa. The desert locust found in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia inhabit some 60 countries and can cover one-fifth of Earth’s land surface.
- A desert locust swarm can be 1,200 square kilometers in size and pack between 40 and 80 million locusts into less than one square kilometer. These massive swarms travel as many as 100 miles a day.
- Each locust can eat its weight in plants each day, so a swarm of such size would eat about 200 million kilograms of plants every day.
- Amazingly a desert locust swarm in Kenya in 1954 consumed over 200 square kilometers of wild and cultivated plants.
- Locust swarms can inflict massive damage. In the U.S. alone, grasshoppers cause about $1.5 billion in damage to grazing lands each year.
- Grasshoppers sometimes “spit” brown liquid to defend themselves repelling predators.
- Grasshoppers are symbols of luck in Japan.
- In some parts of the world grasshoppers are alternative to meat being a rich source of protein and low in fat. People in Thailand and China would sell deep-fried grasshopper as street food, in Africa people eat them as daily meal.
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