A lone grasshopper doesn't do much harm, although it eats about half its body weight in plants per day. But when locusts swarm, their combined feeding habits can completely defoliate a landscape, leaving farmers without crops and people without food. In the U.S. alone, grasshoppers cause about $1.5 billion in damage to grazing lands each year. read more
Grasshoppers have a wide range of predators at different stages of their lives; eggs are eaten by bee-flies, ground beetles and blister beetles; hoppers and adults are taken by other insects such as ants, robber flies and sphecid wasps, by spiders, and by many birds and small mammals. read more