Also if you want an actually useful fact: basically all arthropods are safely edible without special preparation except for a few butterflies and moths and their caterpillars, so if you're ever in a starvation situation, catch some bugs.
Source for this generalization? If an arthropod is brightly colored, particularly regardless of sex, there’s likely to be a reason.
In grasshopper season, it would be hard to starve around here. (Yeah they're fast and they fly. They're also big and not particularly perceptive or smart, and they easily get caught in the fabric I use to shade my garden. I can only imagine how many I could catch with a net and some patience.)
Although they’re huge—they can attain the size of a man’s thumb—and flightless, you might not want to eat (U.S.) Southeastern Lubber Grasshoppers (associated particularly with Florida, because of course.) Reports of their toxicity vary wildly; it may depend on their local food plants.
(Image: a brilliant orange-and-yellow grasshopper with pink-touched vestigial wings, seated in profile on a weathered wooden plank.)
Now, the similarly humongous olive-drab Differential Grasshopper? Them’s good eatin’:
(Image: an olive-green grasshopper with muted yellow-and-black-striped hind legs, lying at 3/4 angle upon bright green serrated-edged leaves.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-09-13 07:23 pm (UTC)Also if you want an actually useful fact: basically all arthropods are safely edible without special preparation except for a few butterflies and moths and their caterpillars, so if you're ever in a starvation situation, catch some bugs.
Source for this generalization? If an arthropod is brightly colored, particularly regardless of sex, there’s likely to be a reason.
In grasshopper season, it would be hard to starve around here. (Yeah they're fast and they fly. They're also big and not particularly perceptive or smart, and they easily get caught in the fabric I use to shade my garden. I can only imagine how many I could catch with a net and some patience.)
Although they’re huge—they can attain the size of a man’s thumb—and flightless, you might not want to eat (U.S.) Southeastern Lubber Grasshoppers (associated particularly with Florida, because of course.) Reports of their toxicity vary wildly; it may depend on their local food plants.
(Image: a brilliant orange-and-yellow grasshopper with pink-touched vestigial wings, seated in profile on a weathered wooden plank.)
Now, the similarly humongous olive-drab Differential Grasshopper? Them’s good eatin’:
(Image: an olive-green grasshopper with muted yellow-and-black-striped hind legs, lying at 3/4 angle upon bright green serrated-edged leaves.)