Texas toddler finds rare pink grasshopper in mom’s garden

AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas woman snapped a photograph of a rare sight -- a pink grasshopper that her son found in her garden.

Alison Barger told KXAN the grasshopper was spotted by her 3-year-old son, Brooks.

According to Victoria Hillman of National Geographic, the rare species is a genetic mutation.

“We believe these funky individuals to be a rare morph of the common meadow grasshopper,” Hillman wrote in a blog for the magazine.

Hillman said the mutation is called erythrism, and it’s caused by a recessive gene similar to the one that affects albino animals, KXAN reported.

“This mutation results in one of two things happening or even a combination of the two; a reduce or even absence of the normal pigment and/or the excessive production of other pigments,” Hillman wrote in the National Geographic blog.

© 2020 Cox Media Group