GRASSHOPPER CRICKETS LOCUSTS

GRASSHOPPER

There are around 17,000 known species of the family Orthoptera. They include some of the most known jumpers and singers such as crickets, bush crickets and grasshoppers. On a warm summer’s evening you can enjoy their musical chirps.

Grasshoppers, true crickets and bush crickets share their characteristics. They have solid head, two large compound eyes, powerful chewing mouthparts, two pairs of wings and large hind legs for jumping.

CRICKET

Grasshoppers are mostly green or brown, love the sun and live in grasslands. During the day they feed on a variety of plants and jumping from place to pace. Their short antennae have sense organs.

Grasshoppers are small, songless and almost wingless.

Bush crickets have long hair-like antennae and mostly live in trees or bushes. Their diet is mostly plants but are also carnivores. They eat both plants and insects.

Females have a long, curved, blade-like ‘tails’ which is an egg-laying tube (ovipositor). Bush crickets are active at night including during the dusk.

The cave cricket are flightless cave dwellers with long, fine antennae.

Breeding

They all start life as an egg. The hutched nymphs known as hoppers, look like tiny versions of their parent but they have no wings which will grow. There is no larval stage or pupa. As they grow they shed their skins.

Grasshoppers and crickets crawl or hop along. Sometimes they have a short flight or a long jump. The insect’s muscles are very efficient and they can jump several times the length of their body.

Flying

The first pair of wings are solid and serves as protection and camouflage. The second pair are used for flying. They are fine, skin-like wings and larger.  They folded up along the body.

Grasshoppers and crickets are known for their singing. Male grasshoppers ‘croon’ to impress the females and as a warning. They rub a row of little pegs on their hind legs against hardened edges on their forewings. Some females can sing, but softly.

Bush crickets and true crickets have a different way of singing. They rubbing the bases of their wings together. Their songs are higher pitched and last longer than grasshoppers.

True crickets’ delicate songs can be heard at any time of the day or night.

Each species has its own sound and vary between metallic, grinding, hissing, buzzing, ticking, scratching or like the noise of striking a match.

Male and female grasshoppers have hearing organs on their abdomen. The ears are like stretching skins or eardrums which vibrate.

Crickets and bush crickets have their ears on their front legs. They scan the surrounding by waving their listening legs as they walk.

LOCUST

Locusts are fantastic jumpers. Their hind legs are extra long to provide the springing thrust. The power of the leap comes from the centre of the joint between the femur and tibia. The hind legs are like chicken drumsticks with powerful muscles inside the huge femur.

The tibia is long but tough and thin. It acts as a lever against the ground as it snaps from a closed position to a fully extended one.

The female desert locust inflates her abdomen to dig a hole deep enough for 30 to 100 eggs. She covers them with a sticky liquid which turns into a capsule when dry.

Locusts are large grasshoppers which live in warm parts of the world. They are mostly quite harmless and live on their own.

For unknown reasons they form, now and then, a huge swarm of thousands of locusts.

Their shape and colour change and their muscles grow. Then they hop, feed and fly together across the countryside. Wherever they land they destroy whole fields by eating huge amount of plants.

When they are gathered in a huge swarm locusts are the most feared and destructive insects in the world.