Here is a surprise. Grasshoppers and crickets like most members of the insect order Orthoptera are notorious for eating plants rather than helping them. Scientists have discovered that Grasshoppers and their relatives can pollinate plants like bees. The finding has come from the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where a cricket was observed pollinating an orchid. Till now the process of pollinating was the preserve of honey bees, ants, beetles, hoverflies, butterflies, moths, birds and bats.
The pollination by cricket was recorded on a camera trap set up by orchid researcher Claire Micheneau in a Réunion forest. The species involved was an orchid called Angraecum cadetii.
Dr Micheneau's discovery has been published in the latest issue of journal Annals of Botany.
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