Sprinkled Grasshopper
Sam spotted this good-sized grasshopper (about an inch long) on our garage floor on July 31, 2011. It wasn’t dead, but it was pretty calm and just sat there while I took pictures.
It’s face has a fairly pronounced forward slant (projecting forehead), which is consistent with it being one of the Slant-Faced Grasshoppers, subfamily Gomphocerinae. It has wings (which makes me pretty sure it’s an adult), but the wings are far too small to support it in flight. There are a number of grasshopper species with short wings like this. Sometimes it is only one sex with short wings, sometimes it is both, and sometimes they have varying forms within the species, with some having short wings and some having long ones.
I had some trouble trying to find this one in the book “Orthoptera of Michigan”, which was a surprise because that book is very comprehensive, and I wouldn’t expect it to be missing any species that I am likely to find. But of the short-winged species that they had, either they didn’t look right otherwise, or they had never been recorded from the Upper Peninsula. So I went to BugGuide with it, and David Ferguson identified it as a female Sprinkled Grasshopper, Cholealtis conspersa.
That cleared up the mystery of why I had a hard time finding it in the book: this is a fairly sexually dimorphic species, and “Orthoptera of Michigan” only had a picture of a male. The males have prominent black coloration on the sides of the thorax, and have sufficiently longer wings that they can fly a bit. The females, on the other hand, have short wings and subdued coloration (like this one), and the species description in the book says the females tend to be kind of lethargic (which would be why this one just sat there while I took pictures). It’s a common species in the northeast and north central US, and southern Canada, but doesn’t seem to be a prominent pest species. The females lay their eggs in rotting stumps and the like, while the males do most of the jumping and singing.
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This is a hefty looking creature that looks faintly like a Samurai warrior in insect form. Or perhaps a bull without a matador.
I imagine it was too heavy to move and this is why it did not resist your attentions (photographical or otherwise).
Just today my younger son found a centipede or millipede on the floor of our living room. I had him guard it while I searched high and low for the vacuum cleaner to dispose of him (or her).
The problem was we were both occupied with avoiding the fleeing bug (who ran for the pots filled with dying plants in the entrance) and so didn’t see the vacuum cleaner hidden under the boots and shoes in the closet.
We waited ages until my husband came down and did the manly job of disposing of the creature.
I don’t know what it was exactly.
I tied the garbage back around his (or her) remains and it is on the front porch right now (I forgot to put the garbage in the disposal bin).
I would never take photographs of a bug unless it was secured (i.e. dead on a spider web).
Looks like you played with this bug (i.e. touched it and turned it in various ways).
I admire the way you have described the female bug here:
The females, on the other hand, have short wings and subdued coloration (like this one), and the species description in the book says the females tend to be kind of lethargic (which would be why this one just sat there while I took pictures).
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The “subdued coloration” is a poetical way of saying she isn’t vivid but still pretty.
The lethargic bit might be a bit of a misinterpretation of her state of being. She might have been day dreaming. And you were simply a large boulder or moving bough that resulted in her being shape shifted around.
And how do you know the “males do most of the jumping and singing”?
She simply may be the silent singing sort like I am.
Great photography of a bland subject. You must felt like a wedding photographer shooting a less-than-attractive bride.
🙂
I thought the one I clicked was a rufous grasshopper(link posted in website), but post reading your blog it looks more like what you describe.
Strangely this is from Hyderabad India
https://500px.com/photo/124275991/rufous-grasshopper-by-sharad-bapat