South Africa Wildlife
Mechanical Knight: Corn Cricket
The beauty is in the minutiae of the world. This is an armoured ground cricket or corn cricket (Family Bradyporidae), and what a knight in shining armour it is. The glossy blue-grey carapace, the spiny pronotum, the mechanical gait. To get up close and admire these Orthopteran insects is to step into another world. Perhaps bizarrely, when I focus on a corn cricket, it triggers memories of the armour sections of European museums where knights of olden times stand to attention in glass cases, and medieval movies where dismounted knights clunk, jerk and swivel as they walk. As ever, human engineering and design mirrors the natural world. The insects were there first.
Location: Northern Cape, South Africa
Photographer: Jason Gilchrist
