Cape Breton girl discovers rare pink grasshopper

An 8-year-old girl in Nova Scotia made a rare discovery after finding a pink grasshopper. Ryan MacDonald has the story.

Eight-year-old Abigail Boudreau made a rare discovery when she was playing outside her home in Louisdale, N.S., on Monday evening.

“My husband was working on his boat and she was off in the grass, and all of a sudden all I hear is, ‘I found a pink grasshopper!’” said Robin Boudreau, Abigail’s mother. “She came running with her hands clasped together as tight as she could hold them.”

On Friday, the Grade 2 student brought the pink grasshopper to school at Felix Marchand Elementary inside a jar with some other grasshoppers she had caught.

She even gave her new pet a name.

“Emily, because I like that name,” she said.

Robin Boudreau, who teaches pre-primary at the school, couldn’t help showing the insect to her colleagues and to students at the school.

“For me, this was one of those things that I couldn’t keep this to myself,” she said. “I had to bring it to school. I had to show it to everybody. I took my lunch break on Tuesday going around to each class, making sure every person got to see it.”

Andrew Hebda, a retired curator of zoology at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, explained that the pink hue is basically a fluke of genetics.

“In this case, what’s happened is the genes controlling for red have expressed much more strongly than the genes controlling for black,” Hebda said. “So essentially, we end up with something that is reddish-pink.”

Hebda said rare colours can also occur in some other creatures – like snakes and frogs, and of course blue lobsters – and that from a survival standpoint, there is a reason you don’t often see this type of thing.

“The problem is, if you are a bright pink colour on a dark green background and your principle predator is a bird, hey, guess what? You really stand out.” Hebda said.

Emily might soon have to take her chances back in her natural habitat.

“I’m going to release her at my house,” Abigail Boudreau said.

For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page