人们惊奇地发现蚱蜢是粉红色的

人们惊奇地发现蚱蜢是粉红色的

A bright pink grasshopper was spotted in a Texas garden last week by an Austin resident and her young son. No, the grasshopper hadn’t got bored of winter and decided to embrace the colors of spring, sometimes grasshoppers do come in pink.

上周，奥斯汀的一位居民和她年幼的儿子在德克萨斯州的花园里发现了一只亮粉色的蚱蜢。不，蚱蜢并没有对冬天感到厌倦，而是决定拥抱春天的颜色，有时候蚱蜢确实是粉红色的。

The fancy little critter was discovered by Allison Barger’s 3-year-old son in their garden, thanks to its unusual coloring making it stand out. Barger sent photos into local news station KXAN, and from there, its fame has spread.

这只奇特的小动物是艾莉森·巴格尔3岁的儿子在他们家的花园里发现的，多亏了它不同寻常的颜色，才让它脱颖而出。巴格尔把照片传到了当地的KXAN新闻电台，从那里开始，巴格尔的名声就传开了。

Allison Barger

WOW! Check out this rare pink grasshopper found in a garden in SW Austin. Have you ever seen something like this? Photo courtesy Allison Barger.

哇!看看这只罕见的粉红色蚱蜢，它是在奥斯汀西南部的一个花园中发现的。你见过这样的东西吗?图片由艾莉森·巴格尔提供。

While definitely rare and unusual, the striking hue of this bubblegum pink hopper is not actually unique. The color is down to a genetic mutation called erythrism related to the overproduction of red pigments and the underproduction of dark pigments, caused by a recessive gene – much like that for albinism, melanism, and leucism.

尽管这只泡泡糖粉色的蚱蜢非常罕见，但它引人注目的色调其实并不是独一无二的。这种颜色是由一种叫做赤体病的基因突变引起的，它是由一种隐性基因引起的，这种隐性基因与白化病、黑变病和亮色病很相似。

Erythrism has been seen in a variety of animals, from a “strawberry blond” leopard in South Africa to a snake in Georgia, and though it is indeed rare, it most often seems to crop up in grasshoppers, with people spotting them from Japan to Ireland, and now Texas. It was first documented in 1887 in a katydid species, and is usually only seen in nymphs – young grasshoppers – as many don’t make it to adulthood thanks to their color shining a spotlight on them.

从南非的“草莓金发”豹子到乔治亚州的蛇，各种各样的动物身上都发现了斑疹热。尽管斑疹热确实很罕见，但它似乎最常出现在蚱蜢身上，从日本到爱尔兰，再到现在的德克萨斯州，人们都能在蚱蜢身上发现斑疹热。它在1887年首次被记录在一种蝈蝈类动物身上，通常只在若虫(年轻的蚱蜢)身上看到，因为许多蚱蜢无法活到成年，这要归功于它们身上的颜色。

Pink is definitely the color to be seen in this season, as another rosy-hued wonder took the world by storm recently. First spotted back in 2015, the world's only known pink manta ray – nicknamed Inspector Clouseau after the bumbling character in the Pink Panther – who resides in Australia, was back in the spotlight recently when photographer Kristian Laine snapped him in the waters around Lady Elliot Island and shared the pictures on Instagram.

毫无疑问，粉红色是本季最抢眼的颜色，最近，另一种粉红色的奇观席卷全球。首次发现早在2015年,世界上唯一的已知的粉红色的蝠鲼(俗称探长克鲁索在粉红豹笨手笨脚的角色后,居住在澳大利亚,最近在聚光灯下的是摄影师克里斯蒂安·莱恩拍摄他的夫人艾略特岛周围水域和共享Instagram的照片。

Don't dim my shine. Nadine Klose/Shutterstock

Pink grasshoppers may be rarely spotted because without their greeny-brown camouflage that allows them to fade into the foliage, they are easy targets for hopper-munching predators. That doesn't mean all grasshoppers want to be wallflowers though.

粉红色的蚱蜢可能很少被发现，因为没有它们的绿棕色伪装，它们很容易成为捕食者的目标。但这并不意味着所有的蚱蜢都想当壁花。

South Africa's Elegant grasshopper (Zonocerus elegans) either didn't get the memo or is too fabulous to care.

南非优雅的蚱蜢要么没有得到这份备忘录，要么因为太过华丽而无暇顾及。