Many young animals look much like their parents. Others do not. In each stage of growth they become more like their parents. Look at the pictures and notice how the frog changes in each stage of growth.

The frog’s eggs are laid in water. The eggs have a jellylike covering and look like a mass of jelly in the water. Young frogs hatch from the eggs.A young frog, which looks like a small fish, is called a tadpole. Like fish, tadpoles have tails and breathe air from the water in which they live.

Gradually back and front legs form. The tail disappears. Finally lungs form in the young frog. It can no longer breathe in water. It must breathe in the air. The frog is then an adult.

There are probably as many grasshopper life histories as there are grasshopper species. Each species appears to possess a unique set of ecological and physiological adaptations that allow it to grow, survive, and reproduce in its environment. The habitat furnishes individuals with nutritive food plants, adequate living space, satisfactory soil conditions for the eggs, and favorable or tolerable physical and biotic relationships for all the life stages. Because of the distinctive habits and behaviors of grasshoppers, the particular facts of their life histories will be discussed later in treatment of the individual species.

All grasshoppers begin their lives as eggs. Yet eggs represent the least known stage of the grasshopper life cycle. They are laid in the soil of the habitat and develop hidden from the view of humans. Eggs of a few species, however, have been studied in both field and laboratory. Incubation of eggs begins immediately after females deposit them in the soil. The embryo, at first a tiny disc of cells laying on the ventral side of the yolk surface and at the posterior end of the eggs, grows rapidly, receiving nourishment from the nutrient stores in the yolk.