CHAPTER VIII 



PHYLUM ARTHROPODA, CLASS INSECTA, ORDER 

 ORTHOPTERA 



THE RED-LEGGED LOCUST (Continued) 



Self -protection. A grasshopper not only needs to secure 

 food but must also escape from lurking enemies and other 

 dangers if it is to be successful. Each obstacle must be 

 met or avoided in a different way. The grasshopper, 

 therefore, has many adaptations for enabling it to slip out 

 of difficulties which might, in the absence of special meas- 

 ures, prove its undoing. The flight of red-legged grass- 

 hoppers is comparatively slow, but so erratic that birds 

 have some difficulty in catching these insects on the wing. 

 The grasshopper's method of escape from a pursuing enemy 

 is to give a hop or make a short flight, then rest quietly for 

 a time, and, if again threatened with immediate danger, 

 to make another quick change of locality. Such tactics 

 are continued until the grasshopper either escapes or is 

 captured. An expert hunter, like a turkey, catches the 

 grasshopper at the moment it alights, before. there is time 

 to start off again. Some species of grasshoppers are so 

 swift, however, that they easily escape capture unless taken 

 unawares. 



When a grasshopper rests in its natural haunts, it is 

 difficult to see, for each species is decked out to match its 

 surroundings. There may be green to simulate the grass, 

 dark bands to resemble the shadows among the vegetation, 

 or an arrangement of colors to obliterate the outline of the 

 grasshopper's body so as to make it look like something else. 

 It is, of course, a great advantage to be protectively colored, 

 and the grasshopper's attitudes make its resemblance to 



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