The grasshoppers that are my life

[Sdaji]

Sdaji wrote:
Don't you remember what Sdaji means? Don't you remember me telling you after the apricot-top-wearing-girl incident?

Omg do you remember how much i had drank by then and it was 4am in the morning. Maybe you can refresh my memory and pm me the answer

Of course I remember how much you'd had and that it was 4am! Why else do you think I told you? I wouldn't tell you if you were well rested and sober! You'd remember!!! :twisted:

Do you remember the stories you told me that morning? :lol:

OMG i had no idea grass hoppers were so pretty up close, i usually sweep them outside gingerly... hehe.

Most grasshoppers aren't as pretty as those girls, the Warramaba are quite exceptional. Actually, they're Morabines, which arguably aren't grasshoppers at all.

I had a closer than usual look at work today and noticed a lot more variation than I'd previously realised existed, more of them have green on their faces than I knew and some of the grey morphs (which have boggled everyone who has tried to work on them, myself included) have black facial stripes! There are also some with large blue patches. I am thinking about going all out and buying an expensive camera to get some proper shots of these girls, there are dozens of very distinctive forms, both dorsally and facially and it seems a huge shame that the cr@ppy collage I posted yesterday is probably the second best ever produced with the other one not being all that much better.

 

[Stevo]

I remember talking about calcification , gippies and gtp's but not about "sdaji"

 

[Wrasse]

They all look like they are doing the "Funky Gibbon" for the camera, you aren't sneaking your music in for them are you?

 

[Sdaji]

They all look like they are doing the "Funky Gibbon" for the camera, you aren't sneaking your music in for them are you?

Drop one arm down by your knees,
Let the other arm reach up to the trees,
Ooh ooh ooh the funky gibbon
Let your wrist go limp like a big baboon and get ready to sing this gibbon's tune...
Give me an ooooh!

Cool song, but no, none of them have ever heard it. About the only things the ever hear are my boss and I discussing their phylogenies and more than anything they hear me telling them how pretty and special they are I think the people who work in the rooms adjacent to mine (slugs on one side, the surgery on the other and mice across the corridor) think I'm quite twisted! They're probably quite right.

 

[dobermanmick]

What is the lifespan of them ? do they live longer then the standard grasshoppers ?
Morabines ? i havent heard this before ?

 

[Wrasse]

The people that talk to their slugs think you are twisted.....

 

[Sdaji]

What is the lifespan of them ? do they live longer then the standard grasshoppers ?
Morabines ? i havent heard this before ?

It vaires a heap, but six months would be quite a respectable age. "Standard" grasshoppers vary a great deal, some live longer, some die sooner.

Not many people have heard of morabines, they're not well known at all.

The people that talk to their slugs think you are twisted.....

Well, the slug guy doesn't talk to his animals, but I think he thinks I'm a weirdo. I get on pretty well with most of them, whether or not they think I'm weird Some of the people are disturbingly nice to me... it's a bit creepy :shock: Maybe it's because most know about the animals I have at home and most of them are working on rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, rats, mice, small marsupials or lizards and think that I might get ideas if they get on the wrong side of me :lol:

 

[rodentrancher]

Hi Sdaji? Great pics by the way. Do you do any studies re "Field Crickets"? They are the ones with the really big nippers in the front? Dave just asked the question to me, so just thought I'd ask ok? Cheers Cheryl PS. Dave just wondered if they would be any good to breed as froggie food? I said no, but thought I'd better ask someone that was involved with insects etc?LOL! Just asking?

 

[Sdaji]

I'm familiar with them, awesome creatures, admittably rivaling the Warramaba, although not facially of course!

They are carnivourous and so would obviously be utterly insane to use as a food source, as you'd have to breed insects to feed the insects you feed to your herps.

Here is a katydid (type of insect from the grasshopper family) I found on a field trip this year, this is one of the carnivorous orthopterans. There's no size reference but she is very big If anyone is interested, you can visit her at the Melbourne museum, she's currently on public display there (alive). We found a few of these on that trip, very exciting.

The heaviest insects in the world are supposedly the wettas from New Zealand, which are in the family of carnivourous orthopterans you're talking about. I have some preserved specimens from Papua New Guinea which are about 20cm in length (including the wings) and absolutely mind blowingly huge, they are also carnivourous, I believe. My grandfather collected them about 20-25 years ago. One of these days I must get around to photographing them, it's a shame that they've probably only been seen by about 10 people, in the 20 or so years since they were collected.

For the record, the largest Australian orthopterans are said to be the white kneed crickets, I'm told the largest of those occur on an island off the east coast... the name escapes my memory, perhaps someone else can remember or can be bothered looking it up. These are big nasty carnivorous things, similar but slightly smaller things are common across Australia, I've seen them in habitats from deserts to tropical rainforests.

 

[instar]

Thats an Awesom pic Sdaji !! wow!~

 

[Magpie]

We get "king crickets" here.
They jump just like frogs and with their large size (5-7cm) you think that's just what they are as you drive along.