Have you ever seen a grasshopper? But did you know that this pretty vocal insect is a predator? Lurking, he can wait a long time until a careless victim appears. The grasshopper attacks everyone who is smaller than him, and sometimes even those who are larger than him. Grabbing the victim with tenacious and strong paws, he tears it apart with powerful jaws and eats it right away. Children who caught grasshoppers remember that a green, brown, or brown bite of a serenade is very painful. The insect easily bites through the skin.
Green but not a grasshopper
There is an insect that resembles a grasshopper so much that an inexperienced gaze does not immediately distinguish one from the other. This is the locust. Locust life takes place in two phases. At the moment of “loneliness”, the filly take a protective color, lead a relatively calm lifestyle. In the second stage, they form flocks. This is the main difference between a locust and a grasshopper: an insect similar to a grasshopper is a herbivore.
Straying in flocks, short-haired grasshopper twins can destroy hundreds of hectares of crops in a few hours. Such flocks move with alarming speed, and so far they have not yet come up with the means to combat them. What else makes a field thunderstorm different from a grasshopper? Short mustache, shorter than the master serenade, hind legs, powerful forelegs. Locusts do not jump, therefore, her legs are weaker. Finally, the grasshopper destroys insects, saving people from them, and the locust destroys farmland, causing harm.
Another double
Another green insect that resembles a grasshopper is a mantis. Of course, an entomologist can easily distinguish one species from another. However, the townspeople are not always able to understand who is in front of them. Moreover: not everyone can see a mantis, so deftly he “pretends” to be a green twig. Even some insects do not see it among the foliage and fall directly onto the predatory insect, instantly becoming its prey.
A praying mantis can be recognized by its characteristic stance resembling a prayer. He has a triangular head, very long forelegs. During mating, the females bite off the male’s head, but even if he is decapitated, he fulfills his duty to the “spouse”.
Either a wand or a flower
The stick insect is another insect that resembles a grasshopper. During the day, he pretends to be a flower or twig (for which he received the name), and at night he searches for plant food. Even looking closely at the foliage, you are unlikely to distinguish a stick from a twig. In Russia, these insects are green and small, but in New Guinea, individuals up to 20 cm long are found. They take on the color of the surrounding foliage. These individuals can often be found at exhibitions of exotic nature.
The grasshopper has “doubles” that are many times larger than it. On the barrier reef you can meet the domesticated giant Wet. The insect, similar to a grasshopper, grows up to 9 centimeters, but weighs almost 80 grams. This is a record among insects.
