In Your Face

I don’t like it when grasshoppers fly into my face. It’s a weird sort of annoying, something on the level of breaking a shoelace or butt-dialing someone you really would rather not talk to. Although having a hopper strike your face doesn’t hurt, it’s startling. And given the size of grasshoppers' eyes, how does that happen? If we had eyes proportionally sized, they would be the size of saucer plates.

Just for fun, I queried the internet about a grasshopper’s eyes and visual acuity. It’s complicated. Grasshoppers possess a sophisticated visual system. As it turns out, they have more than one set of eyes. The big eyes are compound units comprised of what are essentially an array of motion detectors. Complementing these are three simple eyes on the top of their head, which are equivalent to light sensors. When put together, they provide a hopper with a wide field of view but not particularly great acuity.

Apparently, grasshoppers run into us simply because they are bad drivers.

PHOTO: https://orthoptera.org

—Mitchell Hegman