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These
absolutely incredible looking insects are
HORSEHEAD GRASSHOPPERS
from Peru! I believe them to be the
strangest-looking insects I have ever kept and they
are one of my favourites too! They resemble
stick insects in many ways (and like stick insects
they feed on leaves such as bramble and oak) but as
they are grasshoppers they have enormously long back
legs and can hop surprisingly well considering how
thin these legs are! This is a female, which
in this species
is much larger than the male:


These
animals get their common name due to their very
unusually shaped heads as you can see above and
below, and I think they have a confused kind of
facial expression which I think is absolutely
brilliant!

Here are
a male and female together, the male being much
more slender and a lovely bright green colour all
over:

In the
picture below the male has his front feet in the
female's face, how cheeky!!

You can
see really clearly in the next picture just how much
smaller and more slender the male is, and also the
colour difference between the two:

The male
appears to have an even more 'confused' expression
than the female, with his enormous bulbous eyes
making him look more like a cartoon character than a
real living insect!!




Baby
horsehead grasshoppers are extremely cute and I have
successfully bred this species a few times now!
Here are some pictures of newly hatched babies
(nymphs):




You can
see how tiny they are when newly hatched from these
pictures but they are
astonishingly fast growing! This next
picture is of individuals at each of the first three
life stages (known as instars), all of which
hatched just a few short weeks apart!

Just four months
after hatching they moult for the final time to
become fully grown, here is one my first ever
'babies' just four months after hatching and
looking fantastic as an adult female!


Like all
grasshoppers this species grows by removing its
entire old exoskeleton in one piece, underneath
which a new larger one is ready to take its place!
The removed exoskeleton or exuvia looks just like
the real grasshopper except that it is empty!
Here is an example of a female's exuvia following
the final moult to maturity, as you can see it looks
amazing!




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