Pinky Rides Again!

You may remember "Pinky", the charming fuchsia-colored katydid that made the pages of this blog back in July, here, here, and here. Not only was Pinky blogged about, the Internet went viral with pinkness as she was twittered and facebooked about, and ultimately featured in a number of newspaper articles. Several thousand people probably saw her image and read about her.

Well, it paid off, as last Tuesday I got a call from Angela Johnson, proprietor of A Natural Place in the Hocking Hills. Angela's daughter had found another pink katydid, and they had remembered the newspaper articles about Pinky. In a fortuitous twist, I had to give a talk in Athens the following day, and the Johnson's place was just off the route that I had to take to get there.

They were good enough to hand the beast over to me, and I am doing my best to provide luxuriant accommodations for Pinky II. This one is another female bush katydid, apparently of the genus Amblycorypha. Pinky I, you may recall, succumbed to the ravages of an internal parasitoid, the larvae of a Tachinid fly. The new pinkster shows no signs of being parasitized, is a full adult, and as we shall see, eats like a horse.

Here she is - every bit as richly hued as her famous predecessor. We've got her housed in an aquarium loaded with a variety of fresh foliage, and she regularly wolfs down on various leaves and flower petals.

In this shot, P II is making mincemeat of a sunflower petal. She really likes these.

The insect is essentially completely and thoroughly pink, other than those odd oval-shaped bluish-white eyes.

This video shows the modus operandi of pink katydid feeding methodology. Pink or green, they probably all eat like this; reminiscent of someone chewing corn off a cob.

I am quite hopeful that Pinky II does well and survives for some time. If so, there may be some grand plans in her future.