Grasshopper's Life Cycle

Mating

• Some grasshoppers, like crickets, rub their back legs or forewings together to produce a clicking sound to attract their mate. Females click softer than males. Others attract mates with pheromones or use their eyesight to find mates. Mating takes place in autumn, when the male can be attached to a female for 45 minutes to an entire day.

Eggs

• The female lays the eggs in the ground or inside the tissues of plants. Female grasshoppers can lay up to 120 eggs, often clinging together from a sticky residue from the female, which forms a pod. Most grasshopper species hatch in the spring.

Juveniles

• When the eggs hatch, the baby grasshoppers look like an adult grasshopper without wings. Grasshoppers shed their skin over a 40- to 60-day period as they grow, losing their skin five times before the last time contains their adult wings.

Food

• Grasshoppers are herbivores, meaning they only eat plants. Their principle source of food is farm crops like rye, wheat, barley, oats and corn. Grasshoppers can consume their own weight in food in 16 hours.

Life After Mating

• Grasshoppers live to mate. Males may mate several times with the same female in order to optimize their chances of success. In many species of grasshopper, the males die after mating and the females live until the cold weather hits or when they have completed their egg-laying.