Locusta | Facts & Information

Origin

Traveling locusts, carried away by the prevailing winds, can fly without interruption 2000 km, at a speed of 40 km/h, which gives them a considerable area of devastation. No other insect is so hardy.

Grasshopper Food

Locusts prefer to eat herbs, leaves and cereals. Some will tend to eat from one type of plant, while others will eat from a variety of sources throughout the day. Only one of the 8,000 species of grasshopper will eat from just one plant species.

The grasshopper hunts during the night and sleeping crickets. Among the locusts there are some species that self-devour. Insensitive to pain, they begin by eating their front legs, then the back of their body. This they do not do because of lack of food.

In some countries, locusts are consumed as a good source of protein. In Mexico , for example, they are appreciated for their high content of proteins, minerals and vitamins. They are usually collected at dusk, using lamps or electric lighting, or nets.

Sometimes they are left in water for 24 hours, after which they can be eaten raw or boiled, dried in the sun, fried, flavored with spices such as garlic, onions, chili, and added to soup or as a garnish for various dishes. They are found in abundance in the central markets of Mexico.

In some African countries, grasshoppers are an important food source because, along with other insects, they bring protein and fat into the daily diet, especially in times of food crisis. They are often used in soup. Locusts eaten in Uganda and surrounding areas are called nsenene, but they are, in fact, Bush crickets.

Use carefully as they may contain tapeworm.

Features Grasshopper

The sense organs are located on the outside of the body and consist of small hairs that are each specially calibrated to respond to a specific stimulus.

Locusts also have eardrums for sound reception. Have the mouthpiece of the masticatory type, and the development of heterometabola. It possessed tympanic organs, and males a stridulatory apparatus.

The eardrums are placed on the sides of the first abdominal segment and the stridulatory organ is formed by a prominent longitudinal rib on the tegmines and the femurs of the hind legs that are set in motion like an arcus on the rib.

Breeding Grasshopper

The reproductive system of locusts consists of gonade.In during reproduction the male introduces the sperm to the female's eggs through very thin and fine calanas.

Then the female hatches the eggs and deposits them at 10-15 cm in the ground, they can also be deposited on the roots of plants or in the stable, for example.

Packaged eggs look like thin grains of rice. They remain so over the winter until spring when the temperature will be warm enough. In temperate areas many grasshoppers spend their lives in the egg, with males living for only three months.

The first nymph that emerges from the egg digs to make its way to the surface, and the rest will use that road already dug.