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Friday, September 18, 2015

Did you know?


Grasshoppers are disliked in agricultural societies all over the world because fluctuations in their population can cause huge swarms of them to wipe out farmers' crops. This is also true in North America, and in the folklore of tribes that rely more heavily on agriculture, grasshoppers are often portrayed with all manner of character flaws such as greed, carelessness, un-trustworthiness, etc. They are also associated with bad luck and discord, and in the Hopi tribe, they are sometimes said to bite the noses of children who disobey elders or violate taboos.
On the other hand, tribes who primarily made their living as hunter-gatherers were rarely bothered by grasshoppers, and the insects do not have these negative connotations in their traditional stories. In some tribes, it was said that grasshoppers could predict the weather and even had power over changes in the weather (especially drought and rain.) And in Mexico, grasshoppers sometimes make an appearance in legends as... food! (Roasted crickets and grasshoppers were a traditional delicacy in many Mexican tribes, and are still enjoyed by some people there today.)








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