A young boy in Kansas found a rare pink grasshopper while searching for insects in his family’s yard.
The boy, who’s 8 years old and hails from Arkansas City, was originally looking for green grasshoppers, according to reporting from John Shelman of The Cowley CourierTraveler, a local news outlet.
Pink grasshoppers have a rosy hue due to erythrism, a genetic mutation that results in the "overproduction of red pigment," according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
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Encyclopedia.com reports that erythrism can result in the reddish appearance of hair, skin, fur, feathers and eggshells in mammals, avian animals and several other wild creatures.
The Arkansas City pink grasshopper has been named Pinky and was reportedly kept in a jar with access to leaves, food and water.
Pink grasshoppers have a hard time surviving long in the wild because their "vivid coloring" makes hiding from predators a more challenging task, according to the AMNH.
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Grasshoppers typically have a color range that ranges from green to olive to brown, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, a fact-checked online encyclopedia.
The digital encyclopedia notes that some grasshoppers can have yellow or red markings.
Last year, an Ohio man found a pink grasshopper while working in Texas as an oil and gas pipeline environmental inspector. The Texas grasshopper was also named Pinky, Fox News Digital reported at the time.
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In 2019, a British woman found a pink grasshopper in Gloucestershire — a county in South West England.
Social media users and photographers have shared their pink grasshopper finds on Facebook and Twitter. Some have even turned to public entomology groups to inquire about what makes a grasshopper pink.
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A fair amount of pink grasshopper sightings have occurred in Texas, including cities such as Dallas, Austin and Lovelady, according to posts shared online by social media users.
