Monday 19 April 2021

Still Unknown Caribbean Orthopteran with Cyan-colored Eyes

Subject:  Blue eyed grasshopper
Geographic location of the bug:  Saint Lucia, Lesser Antilles
Date: 04/19/2021
Time: 08:02 AM EDT
Your letter to the bugman:  No photo shop!!    This grasshopper, found in the open bathroom of our guest house here in Saint Lucia,  has electric blue eyes.     Date, April 19.     Local man says it is a “Clap-Clap” from call at night.   Is it known?   An earlier post had photo of this insect as “unknown orthopteran”.
How you want your letter signed:  Madeleine

Unknown Cyan-eyed Ensiferan from Santa Lucia

Dear Madeleine,
We cannot believe that 13 years have passed since that 2008 posting of the Unknown Caribbean Orthopteran with blue eyes, and there is a noticeable dearth of images online that illustrate this amazing insect.  It is also quite interesting that you also took images of this same unidentified Orthopteran in Saint Lucia, so there must be a population of them on the island.  First we would like to make a few corrections.  This is not a Grasshopper.  Grasshoppers are Orthopterans, but they have short antennae.  The members of the order with long antennae belong to the suborder Ensifera which includes Katydids and Crickets.  Also, we originally referred to this eye color as blue, but in teaching the color wheel to our photo and cinema students, we draw a distinction between the colors blue and cyan, and the eye color of this critter is definitely cyan.  See Reddit or Quora for the difference between blue and cyan.  That said, we are still not able to provide a species identification for this awesome insect.  We will attempt to contact Piotr Naskrecki who is an expert in Katydids to see if he recognizes it.

Unknown Cyan-eyed Ensiferan from Santa Lucia

Unknown Cyan-eyed Ensiferan from Santa Lucia

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