Marjorie Spitz of Aquinnah was tickled pink last week.

You would be too if you had found a cotton-candy-colored creature jumping around your yard. When we think of pink animals, flamingos or pigs may come to mind, but Marjorie found neither gallivanting in her grasses.

Her colorful character was an insect; specifically, a katydid. Katydids, also called long-horned grasshoppers or bush crickets, are nocturnal insects more known for their night noise than for their colors.

Usually brown or green, this katydid was pretty in pink. Turns out, Marjorie’s katydid was a rare anomaly, but not an unheard-of happening in the world of katydids.

The first documented pink katydid was observed in 1874 by Boston born and bred entomologist Hubbard Scudder. Besides being a native Bostonian, we can be proud that he was the product of the Massachusetts education system as an alumnus of Boston Latin, Williams College and Harvard.

Even with all of that education under his belt, Scudder hypothesized that the pink katydid might be a seasonal occurrence. As leaves turn color in the fall, so perhaps do katydids, he suggested.

Scudder’s theory was rejected in 1907 by myrmecologist and eventual Harvard professor William Morton Wheeler. He surmised that it was genetics that led to pink katydids and that the phenomenon was explained by erythrism. Erythrism is the unusual prevalence of red in animals’ fur, plumage or skin. Wheeler believed that the genetic mutation that caused pink katydids was the result of a recessive gene.

The next scientist to take up the study of these pink insects was Joseph Hancock, who, in 1916, bred a pink katydid for the first time. Today it seems that it is the New Orleans Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium that has taken up the torch to breed colorful katydids, though their website doesn’t show a single peculiar pink insect.

An article in Scientific American notes that the Insectarium was known for its Rainbow Room of katydids where one could see not only green and pink ones, but also yellow, orange, grey and red katydids and for its research, which is changing our knowledge of the trait and its dominance.

Short of a field trip to New Orleans, it might be possible to spy a pink one on-Island as Marjory did, but you would have to be very lucky. In the last twenty years or so, there have been four verified Island sightings of pink katydids. Note that most of these were found in Aquinnah and one in Chilmark.

Chances of finding these pink peculiarities are slim, since a pink katydid only occurs in one of five hundred individuals. But these rare individuals don’t have it made in that shade, because their survival is not assured. Their pink color, though hypothesized to have developed to hide them when they are on similarly colored flowers, will stand out in most other cases and make these katydids more likely to be captured and consumed prey. Thus it becomes even more rare that they make it to sexual maturity to pass along their special shade to any offspring.

Marjorie was surely fortunate to get a chance to find an Island-born pink katydid and wonderful that she photographed it so we can see and enjoy it too. She kindly released it and it hopped away. One wonders how fortunate it will be and whether it will survive to continue the line of pink insects. First it will have to find a mate, one that will accept its differences and have the right stuff in terms of genetic makeup. Then, perhaps, there could be a litter of pink katydids that are sure to make the other katydids green with envy.

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature.