Here’s Looking At You, Kid!

Did you know that Tettigoniidae go all the way back to the Jurassic period?  Well, I spotted one today, a long-horned grasshopper, commonly known here as a katydid (because when they call, they seem to say “Katy did, Katy didn’t!”).  He was sitting by the house singing, and we took a video of him because you can see his wings rubbing together, making his song.

But when we took the video, there came a caterpillar floating by on a string and the katydid just swept him up with his long horns lightning-fast, and ate it!

To be a bit more precise, this appears to be a Scudderia septentrionalis, a Northern Bush Katydid, a genus of katydids that live in the USA, primarily south in the Appalachians and in the upper Midwest.

Now, I talked to this one, and he told me that he has seen an Allosaur when he was still a little nymph.  His name, he says, is Leafy, and he is a thousand years old, but I doubt he is very good at counting…

 

Advertisement