In late summer, the fields buzz with the singing of male grasshoppers inviting female grasshoppers to court. Rubbing their back legs against their wings, each species sings its own song. After mating, the female grasshopper lays 2 to 120 eggs in the soil, dying soon afterward. However, throughout the winter the eggs remain carefully hidden in the frozen soil.
Hatching in the spring, every grasshopper is an orphan. All grasshopper parents die long before their young hatch. Young grasshoppers look like miniature adults, though they lack wings. It takes nearly two months for hoppers to become adults. As they grow, hoppers molt five or six times because they outgrow their exoskeleton just as we outgrow our clothes. After the last molt, two pairs of wings are present. The heavier, leather-like outer wings protect and cover the membranous hind wings.
Grasshoppers are either short-horned with short antennae or long-horned with long antennae. Short-horned grasshoppers include the common North American lubber grasshoppers and the migratory locusts. Although some common North American grasshoppers may become pests and sometimes show a tendency to form swarms, they do not actually migrate. Most field grasshoppers feed harmlessly on plants but if numerous enough they may be destructive.
If you put a grasshopper’s head under water it would not drown. Why not? Because grasshoppers do not breathe the way we do. Along the sides of a grasshopper are a row of ten tiny holes. These are breathing pores.
Grasshoppers have one large compound eye on each side of their head. This makes it possible for them to see to the side, back, and front. They also have three single eyes but no one knows for sure what these do.
FAMILY: Acrididae
GENUS: Schistocerca
SPECIES: americana