American bird grasshopper
The American bird grasshopper is a big yellow-brown grasshopper with pale wings covered in brown spots. Its babies change colour depending on the weather. In cool weather they are often red, and when it is hot they are green or yellow.
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Fun facts
The mother lays 60 to 80 orange eggs in a frothy lump and buries them in the soil.
The babies hatch after 3 or 4 weeks, dig up to the surface and stay together in a group at first.
Unlike many grasshoppers, it spends the winter as a grown-up, not as an egg.
When it is attacked, it spits out a brown liquid from its mouth to defend itself.
Sometimes huge numbers appear at once and can strip trees of their leaves. That is why people sometimes call it a locust.
Most asked questions about American bird grasshopper
?Is the American bird grasshopper a locust?
Not really. People sometimes call it one, but it does not form big swarms like the desert locust.
?How big is the American bird grasshopper?
Males are up to 4.5 centimetres long and females up to 5.5 centimetres.
?What does the American bird grasshopper eat?
Many plants, including grasses, corn, cotton, vegetables and citrus trees.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Schistocerca americana
- Group
- Grasshoppers and crickets
- Family
- Acrididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Orthoptera > Acrididae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- American grasshopper
Where the facts come from
- Schistocerca americana (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by http://www.birdphotos.com. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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