How flexible are you? I used to run marathons and, like most runners, I am not very flexible. I marvel at ordinary people who can bend down and touch the floor while keeping their knees straight and am utterly fascinated when I watch gymnasts and acrobats. Several years ago I attended a Cirque de Soleil performance and was mesmerized the entire time.
I don’t think of grasshoppers and katydids as being particularly flexible—their outer shell seems rigid and armor-like. Imagine my surprise and delight when I stumbled upon this flexible female Handsome Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum pulchellum) last week at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Normally her ovipositor, the yellow scimitar shaped appendage at the end of her abdomen, faces to the back. In this case, though, she has arched her back so much that the tip of the ovipositor extends further forward than her head.
What is she doing? I think that she is somewhere in the process of depositing eggs. I do not know exactly how that works, but a University of Arkansas website described the ovipositing for a similar katydid with these words, “An ovipositing female embraces a plant stem with her prothoracic and mesothoracic legs and brings the curved and sword-like ovipositor far forward so its tip can scrape the substrate.” There are a lot of unfamiliar scientific words there, but I think I get the gist of what is going on.
I do not recall photographing this process before, but a search of my blog revealed that, in fact, I captured a series of images in a September 2013 posting entitled “Rainbow katydid depositing eggs?“. Be sure to check out that earlier posing for more fascinating photos of a flexible katydid.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
That’s quite a curve she has going there.
It is cool too that the wings remain in their normal position despite that extreme curve.
I like katydids generally, but the most flexing I’ve seen is their antennae-cleaning process. This is a great catch.
Thanks. When I first spotted the katydid, the body position looked strange and it was only when I looked really closely that I realized what was going on.
Blue Rock Horses Frederick County, Virginia bluerockhorses.com
Wow.. how amazing is that?
Cool capture, Mike – she’s a lovely thing!
So colorful!
Thanks, Rebecca.
Amazing, says a man who’s back is so rigid he can’t touch his knees, let alone his toes 🙂.
🙂
He’s very flexible indeed.
I was quite surprised that she could bend that much. Nature amazes me all of the time.
Great image Mike! Nice detail!
It reminds me of a yoga class that I tried out, but it was way too late for me to be able to appreciate it. There must be a name for this pose–downward-facing dog doesn’t seem to quite capture it…
The pose may already be named, Gary, but I would call it the forward-facing katydid. 🙂
Not quite the downward katydid but pretty flexible. If I did that you’d not hear from me for a while until I finished recuperating. Nice coloring.
I love that coloration–the first time I saw a friend’s photos of this species, which I had not seen in person, the colors were so vivid that I was sure they were Photoshopped.