GRASSHOPPERS eat foul plants and then throw up over themselves to discourage
lizards from eating them, a biologist in the US has discovered.
Greg Sword of the Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory in Sidney,
Montana, has shown that grasshoppers eat wafer-ash leaves to deter attacks by
green anole lizards. The lizards spit out the vomit-coated insects without
harming them, he reports in a forthcoming issue of Oecologia.
Unlike other insects that make noxious chemicals to squirt at attackers, the
grasshopper鈥檚 defence just depends on what it has eaten. 鈥淕rasshoppers are like
jelly doughnuts,鈥� Sword says, 鈥渙nly filled with plant toxins instead of tasty
箩别濒濒测.鈥�
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