Therefore, if foul-tasting prey with minor appearance differences evolved, predators would not selectively pick on them, says John Endler, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As those prey became more common, he suspects that predators would learn to recognize and avoid them. Say It Loud Biologists agree that for groups of repulsive prey animals, the flashier the better. Predators learn to avoid you faster. One species of Texas grasshopper remains cryptic green when it's all by its lonesome, but changes to flamboyant yellow and black when raised in a group, reports Gregory Sword in this week's Nature .
Scientists know that some insects change color when their populations increase.
However, no one realized the color change might be associated with foul taste. You Are What You Eat The grasshoppers, a species of locust called Schistocerca emarginata , taste nasty if they have been feeding on the native plant called, appropriately, skunkbush. You need some water to rinse your mouth out. Just chewing on the leaves of the plant is a bad taste, the same flavor. Sword tested how a lizard, Anolis carolinensis , responded to the grasshoppers.