They tell us that the Grasshopper is an inveterate consumer of insects, especially of those which are not protected by too hard a cuirass; they are evidence of tastes which are highly carnivorous, but not exclusively so, like those of the Praying Mantis, who refuses everything except game.

The butcher of the Cicadae is able to modify an excessively heating diet with vegetable fare.
After meat and blood, sugary fruit-pulp; sometimes even, for lack of anything better, a little green stuff.
Nevertheless, cannibalism is prevalent.

True, I never witness in my Grasshopper-cages the savagery which is so common in the Praying Mantis, who harpoons her rivals and devours her lovers; but, if some weakling succumb, the survivors hardly ever fail to profit by his carcass as they would in the case of any ordinary prey.

With no scarcity of provisions as an excuse, they feast upon their defunct companion.

For the rest, all the sabre-bearing clan display, in varying degrees, a propensity for filling their bellies with their maimed comrades.
In other respects, the Grasshoppers live together very peacefully in my cages.