I’m a big fan of a type of science fiction called speculative evolution, this is where a writer, and often times they are also an artist, designs creatures that do not exist, but are realistic in the sense that they are based on our understanding of biology and evolution. Often speculative evolution involves taking educated guesses on what lifeforms that live on other planets might look like.
Before I got into wildlife photography, I really didn’t have a strong image in my head of what grasshoppers look like. Sure I knew they make a distinctive sound and they jump, but as to what they look like, I wasn’t too sure.
If somebody had shown me a drawing of the grasshopper at the top of this post, I might have said something to the effect of, “This spec ev artist is very imaginative, they’ve really captured what an alien might look like, and they’ve really managed to take into account the idea that aliens on other planets might not look anything like Earth life at all.”
My first attempts to get grasshopper photos were disrupted by the fact that, grasshoppers can leap tall buildings in a single bound. If they don’t want me to think they’re aliens why do they literally behave like Superman! And they can do unbelievably big jumps in a split second. It’s like, you have the camera pointed at them, you’re about to press click, and in that split second, gone.
But, I’ve discovered that there’s a bench in the Glen River Park, where, for whatever reason, the grasshoppers seem quite happy to hang out on. They can just sit there for quite some time, happy as ever. And that’s how I found the secret of getting really good grasshopper shots.
And it’s not just grasshoppers that love that bench. I saw my first sighting of a leafcutter bee here, and also another type of bee that I haven’t managed to identify yet, and even though I haven’t seen any dock bugs in quite some time, I saw one recently, on the bench.
So that’s how I managed to get pretty much all of the grasshopper photos I have, all of the clear ones where you can see the detail anyway. They just, really, really like this bench!
You’ll typically hear grasshoppers before you see them, they make a really distinctive sound. I don’t know is my phone up to getting a recording of them, but I should probably try some day. And after you hear them, you see them, and after you see them, they’re gone, leaping an immense distance and that’s the last you’ll see of them. (Unless they’re on their beloved bench!)
I went through my grasshopper photos to try and find the one that best illustrates what a work of evolutionary engineering a grasshopper’s hindlegs are, and I think this image possibly shows that best. If you approach a grasshopper and the grasshopper gets nervous, those amazing hindlegs will take the creature a great distance away in the time it takes you to blink. Imagine you encountered a person who became nervous at your presence, and, in a split second, they had already jumped over a house to get away from you! That’s the equivalent of what grasshoppers do, and it’s amazing!
Although, quick caveat, if a grasshopper somehow grew to the size of a human, the grasshopper would not be able to all of a sudden jump over houses, the laws of physics are all kind of annoying like that. It can be useful to talk about what the “equivalent” jump a human could make if it had a grasshopper’s jumping ability, but a human sized grasshopper would be, in very bad shape, in very bad shape indeed, and most certainly wouldn’t be jumping over any houses!
But the question you’ve probably been wondering all along, and if you haven’t been wondering it I don’t know why you haven’t been wondering it is, what do baby grasshoppers look like? Well, now wonder no more! You’ve already seen this baby grasshopper, in one of the previous photos where the grasshoppers are just hanging out on the bench, but here’s a closer shot. The baby is the one on the left.
Juvenile grasshoppers are called nymphs. They grow into adulthood in a process called moulting, where they shed their outer skeleton and grow a bigger one. Sounds like a David Cronenberg film, but it seems to work for them!:
https://www.britannica.com/video/22258/layer-grasshopper-molts-shell
They moult five times to reach adulthood. And it just occurs to me that if grasshoppers could talk, a common insult might be, “He’s so immature he’s never even lost a skeleton!”
2024 has been the year when I got seriously into wildlife, and it sort of boggles my mind that, before this year, I had no interest in going to look for grasshoppers, even though they live less than a mile from my house! But that also excites me, my main interests up to this point were music, cycling and astronomy, and while these things give me great happiness, I had kind of accepted that I wouldn’t find any new interests, no interest that was completely new to me to set my mind on fire. And then, 2024 happens, and all of a sudden I’m looking for grasshoppers!
The weather has been iffy for the last few days, but when that changes, rest assured I will be going to the park to look for some magnificent leaping aliens!
Ponderings Of An Autist 
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