Badger Tracks

By Anita Carpenter

The Carolina Grasshopper

I was watering my butterfly garden when a large grasshopper took flight and landed about 30 feet away. As it looked at me, I thought, just another Carolina locust. Then I asked myself, how much do I really know about Carolina locusts?

The first thing I discovered was that I had been using the incorrect common name all these years. It should be called the Carolina grasshopper, Dissosteira carolina, named by Linnaeus, all those years ago in the 1700s.

The Carolina grasshopper is a large insect measuring up to 2 inches in length. It is in the insect order Orthoptera, the insect family Acrididae, which are the short-horned grasshoppers that are easily identified by their short antennae and in the sub-family Oedipodinae, known as the banded-winged grasshoppers.

The Carolina grasshopper has narrow, leathery, veined forewings, which may be gray, tan or dusty brown that blend in with the environment. Its hindwings are neatly folded fanlike and hidden beneath the front wings. These black wings are banded with a yellow border, which is conspicuous in flight. When these grasshoppers fly, they may produce a crackling sound that is produced by rubbing its hindlegs along the wing edges.

A solitary insect, the Carolina grasshopper is active in August and September. It prefers hot, barren areas and likes to munch on grass and weeds.

After mating, in late summer, the female selects a sunny, bare ground site for egg laying. She works her ovipositor about 2 inches into the ground. She lays 40 rice-shaped eggs that are held together by sticky, hardened foam. This slightly curved structure is called a grasshopper egg pod.

Eggs hatch the following summer. The grasshopper nymphs, looking like miniature grasshoppers, molt 5 times in about 60 days. These fully adult Carolina grasshoppers emerge, disperse, and the cycle continues.

I was curious as to why the Carolina locust was an incorrect name. Thus, I learned much about locusts. There is a saying: All locusts are grasshoppers but not all grasshoppers are locusts.  Curious? Read on!

The difference depends on the species of the short-horned grasshopper.  Carolina grasshoppers are always destined   to   be   "harmless,"    rather    sedentary  grasshoppers.  A very few other short-horned grasshoppers can still be "harmless," but they tend to be migratory and are called locusts. When environmental conditions are right, usually under very dry conditions, crowding and physical contact with others of the same species can stimulate their brains to increase serotonin levels, which triggers these grasshoppers to swarm. During swarming, these grasshoppers, called locusts, grow stronger legs and wings so they can travel hundreds of miles. Overcrowding turns them into social, more active, and migratory grasshoppers as they move about the landscape.  In doing so, these voracious eaters eat everything in sight. A massive locust swarm is termed a plague.

A swarm in 1875 of the Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, a migratory short-horned grasshopper, turned into a swarming locust frenzy during very dry, drought conditions. The swarm covered an estimated 198,000 square miles, was roughly 1800 miles long and 110 miles wide. It was estimated to contain up to 12.5 trillion locusts. Amid mass destruction, about 2 years later, the swarm suffered a population collapse and by 1902, the locusts were extinct. It was the worst plague in U.S. history. One can only imagine the enormity of the destruction caused by the plague and the hardships suffered by the early pioneers, if they survived. Many didn't.

Locust plagues still occur in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East usually after heavy rains.

As I watch and study the behavior of the Carolina grasshopper, I am thankful it is not a migratory grasshopper and that we can peacefully coexist.

 September-October 2026, The Lake Flyer