Even the smallest swarms of desert locusts rarely contain fewer than 100 million insects able to consume 200 tons of food a day. As long as the locust breeds, the food supply for hundreds of millions of people remains at risk.
The Ravenous Millions: Death and Destruction Follow Man’s Oldest Enemy
By Mr Ghaz, May 5, 2010
The Ravenous Millions: Death and Destruction Follow Man’s Oldest Enemy
On July 28, 1962, radar operators at the Indian National Physical Laboratory in Delhi sounded the alarm. They had spotted a gigantic airborne invasion in progress, and the enemy was already only 60 miles south of the city.
Specialized emergency teams were instantly alerted. India and her traditionally hostile neighbor, Pakistan, joined forces: aircraft from both countries roared into action, flying only 65 feet above the ground in a skillful counterattack.
The initial battle raged for a week; sporadic fighting continued until December, when the two countries declared themselves victorious. The enemy dead numbered more than 100 billion.
It had been no human invasion, but a far more fearsome and rapacious threat: locusts. Using chemicals sprayed from aircraft, human wreaked havoc with these prodigiously destructive pests. But throughout most of history it has been people who have suffered most.
The earliest written record of a locust plague is probably in the Book of Exodus, which describes an attack that took place in Egypt about 3500 B.C.:
Until this century, locust plagues were as unpredictable as they were catastrophic. Swarms of locusts appeared as if from nowhere and vanished just as mysteriously. But in the 1920’s scientists observed that wherever the locusts disappeared, bands of wingless grasshoppers took their place.
Careful observation showed that the two creatures were the same: the hoppers were in fact young locusts. Heavy rainfall provided an ideal climate for breeding and often resulted in a population explosion. The grasshoppers, feeding voraciously, soon underwent a transformation into the gregarious winged locusts that hunt in millions, flying with the prevailing winds in search of food.
Predicting the Threat
Such studies made it possible to predict when and where the insects would swarm, and today the red-legged locust and the African migratory locust have been brought under control. A third species, the desert locust, remains an international threat, with potential predation stretching across 60 countries, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
The scale of the problem becomes even more apparent in light of the desert locust’s appetite. An individual locust weighs only about one-tenth of an ounce, but it will consume its own weight in food every 24 hours. The largest swarm ever recorded, more than 300 billion locusts in South Africa in 1784, covered an estimated 2,000 square miles.
This seething mass was capable of devouring 600,000 tons of food a day. Fortunately, the locusts were blown out to sea and destroyed by a storm. The bodies washed up by the tide formed a bank along the shore 4 feet high and 50 miles long.
Even the smallest swarms of desert locusts rarely contain fewer than 100 million insects able to consume 200 tons of food a day. As long as the locust breeds, the food supply for hundreds of millions of people remains at risk.
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