The Beauty and Geometry of the Grasshopper

While studying a grasshopper in late August at VOA park, I was amazed at his (or her) beauty. I don't know much about grasshoppers, but I learned to appreciate their beauty and perfect geometry that afternoon.

As I was studying the herringbone pattern on this Red-legged Grasshopper's back leg, I couldn't help but feel a sense of geometry. Parallel lines in the segmented abdomen added to the geometric feel--even the wings when folded together formed a triangle.

...moving to the head, his or her compound eyes are made of hundreds of hexagonal facets, and the segmented antenna contain more parallel lines.

...even in the center of his face, three ocelli form a perfect triangle (the ocelli are simple eyes that detect light intensity and may help flying insects find sea level for flight stability). Perfectly made, the insect really opened my eyes to the symmetry and geometry that usually went unnoticed around me.

On The Grasshopper And Cricket

By John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:


When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,


And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run


From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:


That is the grasshopper's -- he takes the lead


In summer luxury, -- he has never done


With his delights, for when tired out with fun,


He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.


The poetry of earth is ceasing never:


On a lone winter evening, when the frost


Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills


The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,


And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,


The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

December 30, 1816