Photo courtesy of The Matson Collection, The Episcopal Home
Lurking in thick vegetation, their favorite hiding place for molting (shown here, compare with next photo), the locusts shed, or molt, their old skin when they outgrow it. Unlike a mammal, for instance, which has skin that grows in tandem with the rest of the body, the locusts’ skin (really an exoskeleton) does not grow along with its body. Locusts molt several times in the month that follows their hatching from eggs.