“My dear young fellow,” the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, “there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.”
-Roald Dahl
Sometimes the tiniest things in nature fascinate me the most. Take this grasshopper that I happened to find on my front porch today. As it turns out, this seemingly lowly insect is actually a marvel of engineering. Did you know:
- A grasshopper can jump 10x their length in the air, and more than 20x their length in distance, without using their wings.
- A grasshopper’s peak acceleration on take off is 20G (a fighter jet only reaches 9G!)
- A grasshopper can see in 360 degrees.
- Grasshoppers lived before dinosaurs (touché cockroaches!)
And aren’t they beautiful in their own ‘insect kind of way’? Just look at the intricate black herringbone pattern on their upper legs, or those tiny spikes rising off the lower leg. Even the bark-like pattern of their wings and the overlapping layers of their abdomen have an artistic rhythm to them.
They are tiny little masterpieces, and a true wonder of nature!
Beth Poe :: FreeForm 
Agreed, great post!