Every spring, the frigid winter air slowly inches its way toward becoming stiflingly hot Summer air. As the temperature rises, little newly hatched grasshoppers seem to suddenly appear everywhere. They are in our grass, gardens, garages, and homes and love to bounce out of accidental traps, like buckets. Many types of insects are similar in shape, color, and size and are sometimes mistaken for grasshoppers, like katydids. Let’s find out what we can about the hoppy little critters and whether or not they can fly.
What is a Grasshopper?
Scientific Classification
Domain: Eukaryota,
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Orthoptera
Suborder: Caelifera
Infraorder: Acididea
Informal Group: Acridomorpha
Size
Depending on the species, grasshoppers can measure between one and five inches. They are not the biggest bugs out there, but having a three-inch-long grasshopper land on your face will still be alarming.
Appearance
Females are larger than males, as with many types of insects. The grasshopper’s body comprises two extra large eyes on a large head and long quivering antennas. Along the thorax are three sets of legs, super strong hind legs, and two pairs of wings. The front set of wings has a leathery texture, while the rear set is more of a membrane.
Habitat
Grasshoppers can be found everywhere, from tundra to deserts. They inhabit marshes, swamps, coastal regions, dunes, rainforests, regular and scrub forests, and mountains.
Behavior
Grasshoppers spend their short lives maturing, breeding, finding food, and ensuring the lives of their offspring. Their name says it all: They spend their lives hopping in the grass.
Diet
They eat any plant in their environment, including leaves, grass, and bark. They especially love crops, which doesn’t make them popular with farmers growing wheat, rye, cotton, corn, and alfalfa.
Lifespan
Tiny grasshopper nymphs reach their adult stage around 5 – 6 weeks of age. Adult grasshoppers do not live long lives; they tend to end around one to two months old.
Grasshoppers love to hide in your garden. Source: Canva
Problems Grasshoppers Cause
Grasshoppers can wipe out a year’s crop if enough of them descend onto the fields. They are also known to be pests in the garden. They can hit the garden hard in the first weeks of summer and continue until the first hard frost. Grasshoppers are also capable of destroying lawns.
Problems Grasshoppers Solve
They are excellent at being a landscaping crew or clean-up crew because they eat plants and dying vegetation, which helps to create the balance between the number and types of plants in the area.
Fun Fact
Grasshoppers have ears on their tummies.
Another Fun Fact
Grasshoppers date back to over 250 million years ago, meaning they hopped around during the early Triassic period, the oldest epoch of the Mesozoic Era. The earth was a gigantic arid, windy, and extra-dry desert with very little life during this period. The climate was slightly different and far more temperate at the North and South Poles.
Grasshoppers are six-legged, ground-dwelling insects typically seen during the year’s warmest months. During the winter, the small greenish-brown insects hibernate in dried leaves and under loose tree bark. They live in most zones but prefer warm, dry climates with plenty of vegetation. Grasshoppers are a member of Orthoptera, suborder Caelifera, home to over 11,000 different grasshoppers worldwide.
Other Insects That Can Be Mistaken for a Grasshopper
Everyone has been mistaken for someone else at some point in their lives. This happens with grasshoppers all too frequently due to the untrained eye. Some believe crickets and grasshoppers are the same thing, but they are far from it. Katydids are also looped into the controversy over which insect is a grasshopper and which isn’t. With 11,000 different types of grasshoppers worldwide, you have surely heard of the type-specific to your area before. They come in greens and browns to blend in perfectly with the background. A few examples of grasshopper species are the clubhorned grasshopper, green-striped grasshopper, differential grasshopper, rufous grasshopper, and the common field or garden grasshopper.
Strangely, Katydids are closer related to crickets than they are to grasshoppers. Sometimes you might hear Katydids called long-horned grasshoppers. Like crickets and grasshoppers, the Katydid plays love songs for any nearby female as he rubs his wings together to create a shrill chirp. Camel-back crickets can also be confused with a grasshopper. Locusts and cicadas also make music with their wings.
Can Grasshoppers Fly?
The short answer is YES, grasshoppers can fly. They can fly like a bird or bat by flapping their wings and gliding. The grasshopper’s wings work very well at gliding long distances while camouflaged across meadows. When you’re as small as a grasshopper, it’s great to have a way to travel that covers ground so quickly since grasshoppers have many enemies who would love to make a snack out of them. Their strong wings work overtime to get them swiftly out of danger when a predator stalks them.
Grasshoppers are part of spring and summer, and while they might be irritating when they munch on our gardens or crops, they have a very real purpose in being alive. They eat fallen or dying plants, providing an excellent protein source for many animals, including frogs, raccoons, squirrels, mice, rats, and plenty of amphibians.
Watching grasshoppers zoom across fields of wheat while they devour the crop is part of summer. In a world without grasshoppers, many animals would perish, and eventually, predators would follow. Then, humans would come next when the animals they depended on for food all died out because the animals they ate also became extinct due to the lack of grasshoppers. Every plant and animal is essential to the world’s health and the food chain.
