The Horse Lubber
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Bed & Breakfast
and Ecology
Resource Center
Flowers
By Kate
Special occasion
arrangements
432.386.4165
Ave C & N 3rd • Marathon, TX
info@evesgarden.org
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by Jim Sage
W
hen I moved onto the South Double
Diamond, south of Alpine, I rather
expected a lot of wind, and I was not
surprised when the hot desert sun ate all of the
paint off of the old Plymouth. What I had not
anticipated was the huge numbers and kinds of
grasshoppers and their voraciousness. Several
years ago they moved in by the thousands and ate
the entire garden. They ate the sotol down to the
ground. They shredded the yuccas and the bear-
grass. They even ate the screens on the windows!
But there was one jewel among all of these hop-
pers: a 2-and-one-half-inch giant who looked as if
he had just arrived from Mardi Gras in his gold
Cadillac. This was the horse lubber (Taeniopoda
eques), common throughout the Southwest and
extending as far south as Central America.
The horse lubber has gold and black antennae,
gold on the nose and around the throat, a large
gold band around the thorax and gold dots along
each side of the abdomen. He is black in color
with greenish forewings, which cover the more
delicate, red hind wings. When he flies, it appears
that he has only one set of wings with the under-
side colored red.
Unlike all other hoppers he appears to taste his
food and then decide what to eat based on flavor.
The female lays her eggs in the ground, where they
spend the winter and hatch out after the monsoon
rains the following summer. The eggs are enclosed
in a pod made of a frothy material that protects
them from parasites and desiccation. I have read
2012 Chamber Events
October 13 - Quilt Show at Community Center
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22
'Drawing by Walle Conoly
Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2012
that in a serious drought the eggs do not hatch, but
I would have to see this to believe it. *
To avoid being eaten, many grasshoppers,
employ a mechanism called crypsis, matching the
soil and other background in color or texture. The
horse lubber does the opposite. He advertises his
presence with his vivid coloring. Because he
extracts toxins from the plants he eats, he is
unpalatable to most predators, and his coloration
warns them of this. He also spits out distasteful
foam when threatened.
Another way he avoids predators is by his abil-
ity to jump 20 times his body length – imagine
how far a human could jump at this ratio! The
large muscles of the hind legs provide much of the
force for jumping, but there is another factor
adding to these impressive leaps. In fact, most of
the energy comes from a crescent-shaped organ
located in the knee of the large hind legs. It is made
of elastic fibers that release in a burst of explosive
energy propelling the hopper into the air.
The horse lubber is also cannibalistic, and if
you leave two in a cage you will be left with one.
Often you will see crushed ones on the highway
with those who were following eating them.
I sometimes imagine that I will come home and
Fran will say, “Honey, a horse lubber ate the
garage door.” I will reply, “Yeah, but they are so
pretty I just can’t kill them.”
*In recent years all grasshoppers are scarce in the South
Double Diamond, including the horse lubber.
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