Frightened grasshoppers can affect their environment New Worlds:
Grasshoppers under stress can behave like tense humans who
overeat sweets. Grasshopper Photo: Courtesy To the layman’s eye,
grasshoppers seem happy-go-lucky creatures, able to go anywhere
they want and have an adequate supply of food. In fact,
according to researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and Yale University, grasshoppers tend to get frightened by
spiders – and this can even affect the productivity of our soil
and our ecosystem. A fearful grasshopper, experiencing stress,
will consume a greater quantity of carbohydrate-rich plants –
similar to humans under stress who might eat more sweets. This
will, in turn, cause chemical changes in the grasshopper and its
excretions, affecting the ecosystem it inhabits. When a scared
grasshopper dies, its carcass – which contains less nitrogen as
a result of its diet change – will have an effect on the
microbes in the ground, which are responsible for breaking down
animal and plant matter. Wi