Joel Pinch, age 8, of Lansing, Mich

Does a Grasshopper hatch from a cocoon?

The teeming world of insects outnumbers all the other animals on earth by about six to one  More than half a million different varieties have been named and classified and insect experts say that this is but a small percentage of the total assortment  The huge class Insects has been sub‑divided into about 25 orders and the insects in each order have certain features in common 

The grasshopper belongs in the order Orthoptera,, meaning straight  wings, Most of the insects in this order have two pairs of wings  The front wings are crisp and leathery and most of the time they rest flat down the insect’s back  When he takes one of his rare flying hops, the grasshopper holds these front wings stiff and straight up in the air The work is done by the papery hind wings  Most of the time these hind wings are folded like a gauzy fan under the protective front wings  Insects of this order have chewing mouths and their youngsters do not go through a grubby caterpillar stage, nor do they go through a sleeping beauty stage wrapped up in a chrysalis or a cocoon  ‑

The new generation begins when Mrs  Grasshopper lays her batch of soft, white eggs  She uses a point on the tip of her abdomen to drill a hole in the ground and push dawn her eggs 

There they rest like, a neat pile of little sausages all sealed together with sticky foam  As they hatch, the babies crawl up through the burrow and out into the wide world,

Each grasshopper infant looks like an incomplete copy of his parents  He has the same big head and burly shoulders, the same huge eyes like shiny black buttons, He is also equipped with over‑sized hind legs and starts leaping around in proper grasshopper style soon after he hatches  The young grasshopper however, has a very short abdomen and no wings  He is called a nymph,

As the nymph eats and grows, a second skin forms under the outer skin„ When the first skin becomes too small, the insect molts and the new under‑skin becomes hard and crisp  In two or three months, the nymph molts perhaps six times  Each time he gets bigger  With the third molting, his wing buds appear like tiny flakes on his shoulders  They too grow bigger with each molting  After the last molting, the wings are complete and the body is full sized  The grasshopper is now an adult insect, ready to start a family of his own.