Wild Facts About The American Bird Grasshopper

A Drawback To Suits Of Armor

• American Bird Grasshoppers are insects, and thus their bodies are covered in hard, mostly rigid plates that form an exoskeleton.
• Exoskeletons function almost like suits of armor, in that they provide a lot of physical protection but don’t expand as the bodies they cover get bigger.
  • Insects must shed and re-form their exoskeletons periodically as they gain mass (called molting).
  • Growth periods between molts are called intermolt periods.

• American Bird Grasshoppers breathe by means of a tracheal system that differs significantly from the way mammals breathe.
  • Gas enters insects’ bodies through spiracles (holes in their exoskeletons), fills air sacs and tracheal tubes within their body cavities, and moves through their systems by means of muscle move and pressure changes in their hemolymph.
  • Their exoskeletons (their “suits of armor”) limit the volume of air that these grasshoppers can take in. As they grow—and until they molt—the air sacs and tracheae compress and hold less oxygen.
• When threatened, American Bird Grasshoppers jump and fly away. The powerful leg and wing muscles that power these movements demand a lot of oxygen.
  • A study researching activity in early, middle, and late stage female American Bird Grasshopper intermolts found that:
    • Body mass increased twofold from Day 2 to Day 12,
    • Their air sacs and tracheae capacity shrank as they gained mass,
    • Their jump rate in the 10th minute of the tests was 70% lower compared to the rate in the 1st minute.
    • The older, more massive females jumped less frequently and for shorter distances per jump, probably due to the impact of reduced volume of oxygen available in their respiratory system. (Kirkton et al. 2012, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-011-0615-x).