How to tell if a grasshopper is male or female? What do grasshoppers eat?

Grasshoppers, also known as locusts, are not only rich in protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and elements such as calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, and manganese, but are also good medicines for treating tetanus, infantile convulsions, fever, and asthma. They are edible, medicinal, and nourishing. How to tell whether a grasshopper is male or female? Are you interested?

Contents of this article

1. How to tell whether a grasshopper is male or female

2. What do grasshoppers eat?

3. Are grasshoppers poisonous?

How to tell if a grasshopper is male or female

You can tell the difference between male and female grasshoppers by observing their appearance. Females are generally larger than males, especially in the abdomen. The abdomen of females consists of 11 segments, and the pair of degenerate appendages in the 11th segment have evolved into short cerci, and there is an ovipositor at the end of the abdomen. The 11th segment of males does not have this feature.

Grasshoppers, also known as locusts, are generally facultative diapause insects. Most of them overwinter as eggs in egg sacs in the soil. Only a few species such as the Japanese yellow-spine grasshopper and the short-legged spotted grasshopper overwinter as adults. The number of generations that occur in a year depends on the biological characteristics of the species and the annual effective accumulated temperature, food, light, and growth and development of each insect stage in different regions. When grown up, they have chewing mouthparts and are herbivorous insects. They have large mouths and well-developed jaws. They feed on plant leaves and like to eat reeds, barnyard grass, white grass, dogtooth grass, and wormwood. They mainly include migratory locusts and soil locusts.

What do grasshoppers eat?

Grasshoppers have a wide range of food, and can feed on leaves, young stems, flower buds and young fruits of wheat, rice, millet, corn, beans, tobacco, reeds, vegetables, fruit trees, forests and weeds. They bite the leaves into notches or holes. When an outbreak occurs in large numbers, they can eat the crops down to bare stalks or eat them completely, causing serious economic losses.

Grasshoppers are also called locusts (locusts, grass hoppers), Orthoptera Acrididae animals, also known as grasshoppers, grasshoppers, etc. There are more than 10,000 species in the world, distributed in tropical and temperate grasslands and desert areas.

Locusts mainly include migratory locusts and ground locusts. There are three types of migratory locusts in China: the East Asian migratory locust, the Asian migratory locust and the Tibetan migratory locust. Among them, the East Asian migratory locust has the widest distribution range in China and causes the most serious damage. It is the main type of migratory locust that causes locust plagues in China.

The East Asian migratory locust is widely distributed in my country, from south of 42° north latitude to the South China Sea and Yunnan, from southern Gansu and Sichuan in the west to the coasts of Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea and Taiwan in the east. Among them, the North China Plain north of the Yangtze River, that is, the low-lying areas in the middle and lower reaches of the Huaihe River Basin, the Yellow River Basin and the Haihe River Basin, mainly including Henan, Shandong, Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui and other five provinces and Tianjin and its affiliated counties are the main places of occurrence.

Migratory locusts have a very diverse diet, mainly feeding on plants of the Gramineae and Cyperaceae families. They are most fond of weeds such as reeds, barnyard grass and red grass (reed). They also like to eat cultivated crops such as wheat, corn, sorghum, rice, millet, and sugarcane. When there is a large outbreak and food shortage, they can also harm crops such as cotton, soybeans and vegetables. Migratory locusts feed on all green parts of plants above the ground, such as leaves, tender stems and young ears, as adults and nymphs (locust nymphs).

Are grasshoppers poisonous?

1. Grasshoppers are herbivorous insects and do not contain toxins.

2. Grasshoppers are herbivorous insects with chewing mouthparts, short whip-shaped antennae, and strong hind legs. They can use bouncing to avoid natural enemies. Their body colors are green and brown, which are the protective colors of their living environment.

3. Grasshopper, also known as locust, is not only rich in protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and elements such as calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc and manganese, but also a good medicine for treating tetanus, infantile convulsions, fever and asthma, etc. It is edible, medicinal and nourishing. It does not contain any substances related to synthetic toxins, and many large feed manufacturers need to grind dried ants into powder as animal feed additives.