Grasshopper
Grasshoppers eat large quantities of foliage both as adults and during their development, and can be serious pests of arid land and prairies. Pasture, grain, forage, vegetable and other crops can be affected. Grasshoppers often bask in the sun, and thrive in warm sunny conditions, so drought stimulates an increase in grasshopper populations. A single season of drought is not normally sufficient to stimulate a major population increase, but several successive dry seasons can do so, especially if the intervening winters are mild so that large numbers of nymphs survive. Although sunny weather stimulates growth, there needs to be an adequate food supply for the increasing grasshopper population. This means that although precipitation is needed to stimulate plant growth, prolonged periods of cloudy weather will slow nymphal development.
Grasshopper
Grasshoppers are sometimes used as symbols. During the Greek Archaic Era, the grasshopper was the symbol of the "polis" of Athens, possibly because they were among the most common insects on the dry plains of Attica. Native Athenians for a while wore golden grasshopper brooches to symbolise that they were of pure Athenian lineage with no foreign ancestors. Another symbolic use of the grasshopper is Sir Thomas Gresham's gilded grasshopper in Lombard Street, London, dating from 1563; the building was for a while the headquarters of the Guardian Royal Exchange, but the company declined to use the symbol for fear of confusion with the locust.