Giant Slantface Grasshopper: Acrida conica

What a camouflage! Spot the grasshopper in the above picture! Here it is when its cover is blown:

Location: The South West Coast, Western Australia

Season: Summer, January

Order: Orthoptera 

Family: Acrididae 

Subfamily: Acridinae 

Tribe: Acridini

Acrida conica

This giant grasshopper, along with a few similar others lives in a dry part of my garden where the weeds have been drying out in the summer heat. It is incredibly hard to spot the creatures, given they blend seamlessly with the surrounding. I have step carefully so I don't accidentally stamp on these. They are seen hopping in daytime when disturbed. They stay still relatively once they hop to a spot, which makes it easy to photograph.

This kind of grasshopper is a rarer brown variant of Giant Green Slantface. The face as seen in the pictures is slant. The dorsal surface as patterns of 'face', with elongated 'eyes' to confuse the predators and help in camouflage. Under the wings is a pinkish abdomen.

The green morph, the Giant Green Slatface Grasshopper made an appearance on the lawn, not far from where the brown morph was found.

 These grasshoppers are from the family Acrididae, a family of short horned grasshoppers. There are 40 species of genus Acrida and they are pests of agricultural crops.