To a zoologist, the leap of the grasshopper is one of the wonders of the world. An adult grasshopper can leap ten times its length in the high jump, 20 times its length in the broad jump. A man up to a grasshopper's hop-to-length standards could clear a five-story building, or bound the length of a football field in three jumps.*
Besides the fascination of these athletic feats, the grasshopper gives the zoologist other good reasons for study. Plagues of locusts (shorthorn grasshoppers) can still endanger the food supply of millions. Knowledge of the nervous...
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