Locust Facts

• Locusts can jump 70 cm (2.3 ft). This is like humans jumping 18 m (60 ft)!
• The first insect ever drawn by humans is a locust. This drawing was found on a bison bone, 10,000 years old, encountered in a French cave.
• There are several edible species, and they are important food sources in some areas, especially in Africa. They can be grilled, roasted or boiled, and also ground to a paste.
• These insects are famous for their catastrophic invasions, mentioned even in the Bible as the eighth plague.
• A 'Hopper' is the common name for an immature locust or grasshopper that is flightless.
• Locusts have short antennae, grasshoppers have very long ones.
• Locusts 'sing' by rubbing their rear feet against their forewing ridges.
• Grasshoppers 'sing' by rubbing the left and right forewings against each other.

Other incredible insect facts

• German cockroaches can survive for up to one month without food and two weeks without water.
• The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old – 80 million years older than the first dinosaurs.
• A cockroach can live up to nine days without its head.
• A butterfly can see the colours red, green, and yellow.
• There is only one insect that can turn its head - the praying mantis.
• Fruit flies have only four pairs of chromosomes: the entire compact genome of the common fruit fly was sequenced in 1998.
• There are more than 150 species of fruit fly already in Australia, but most of these don't attack commercial crops. It's the exotic fruit flies present in many of our neighbouring countries that pose high risks to agriculture.