The great green singer of northern China
Among green leaves, a large katydid sat in plain sight, trusting its colour to hide it. It was a deep, solid green, the green of a well-fed herbivore, and it did not move even when the camera came close. This was a wild adult male, big and built for sound.
This is Gampsocleis gratiosa (Walker, 1869), one of the most famous singing insects of northern China. In Chinese it is called guo guo (蝈蝈), and in the region around Beijing it has been kept in cages for its loud, penetrating song for generations. The species name gratiosa means “graceful.”
It belongs to the family Tettigoniidae, the katydids. It is a large species: the male uses well-developed forewings with a file-and-scraper apparatus to produce a strong trill, mostly in late summer. It is omnivorous, feeding on leaves and also on smaller insects when it can catch them.
Colour varies with environment and individual: most are green, but brown forms occur too, and captive-reared individuals can differ noticeably from wild ones. In the wild around Beijing it is an unmistakable presence in late summer, calling from bushes and tall grass after dusk.
