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Thread: One ugly bug!

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Dec 2011
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    Québec,Canada
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    Louise

    One ugly bug!

    Picture tacken last evening. Can anyone identify? It looks like a huge grasshopper?One ugly bug!

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Jul 2012
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    Montréal, Québec
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    Brad

    Re: One ugly bug!

    It is a grasshopper, in fact -- a good ol' sauterelle. I've seen big ones like that in Québec and New Brunswick before, I'm not sure of the species though.

  3. #3

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    Louise

    Re: One ugly bug!

    Thanks for the answer Brad. I would still like a positive ID so I can inlarge my knowledge and be able to classify my pictures a bit better than "ugly bug" category.

  4. #4

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    Brad

    Re: One ugly bug!

    There are 140 species of grasshoppers in Canada and no good guides that I know of -- you'd probably have to show your photo to an entomologist or check it against a museum collection. There are a few field guides to insects, but most of them don't go down to the species level except to show a few example species, because there are so many insect species that you'd need a book many thousands of pages long to show them all.

  5. #5

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    Louise

    Re: One ugly bug!

    Brad I understand the size of the task. I have purchase 3 books on butterflies. The butterflies of Québec book alone list 1521 spicies with 2443 pictures! WOW. What an interesting hubby photography can be!

  6. #6

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    Jul 2012
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    Brad

    Re: One ugly bug!

    Wow, that is amazing -- I didn't know we had so many butterfly species here! And this is in the north, where species diversity is relatively low. I used to know an entomologist at the Smithsonian named Terry Erwin who worked in the Amazon, and he found more than 1,300 species of beetles living in the canopy of just one species of tree. Maybe you can find a book on the grasshoppers of Québec ;-)

  7. #7

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    Apr 2011
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    Bobo

    Re: One ugly bug!

    Ugly? I think it is far from that. If you can catch them at the right angle they can look downright cute.

    So many species of butterflies? How is it that all I ever see are either Monarchs or Cabbage Whites??

  8. #8

    Join Date
    Dec 2011
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    Louise

    Re: One ugly bug!

    Yep, that many butterflies in Québec. And the book says, except for the Monarch who has the most extraordinary migration of the animal world, our butterflies hibernate here. Most of them spend winter as eggs, caterpillars or chrysalis but some in their adult form. Some caterpillars in the north fabricate glycerol to prevent instant freezing that appened at -70 degree C. Some take 2 summer to complite their cycle. In montain regions and Gaspésie they have a hairy body!
    I hope Mr. Louis Handfield will forgive me for this week translation of his book.

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