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Swarms have devastated crops and have caused famines and human migrations. More recently, changes in agricultural practices and better surveillance of locust breeding grounds have allowed control measures at an early stage. Traditional locust control uses insecticides from the ground or air, but newer biological control methods are proving ...
Locust swarms had infested 23 countries by April 2020. East Africa was the epicenter of the locust crisis—with Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda among the affected countries. However, the locusts had traveled far, wiping out crops in Pakistan and damaging farms in Yemen, a fragile country already hit hard by years of conflict.
Swarms can travel 5 to 130 km or more in a day. Locust swarms can vary from less than one square kilometre to several hundred square kilometres with 40 to 80 million individuals per square kilometre. An adult locust can consume its own weight (several grams) in fresh food per day. For every million locusts, one ton of food is eaten.
Locust have the ability to eat up to their own body weight in a single day. [13] Individuals gather in large groups called swarms, these swarms can range up to 80 million individuals that stretch 460 square miles. [13] Grasshoppers can cause major agricultural damage but not to the documented extent as locust historically have.
A bystander in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, captured the moment when swarms of locusts coated the sky above him on Feb. 21. According to National Geographic, locusts are sometimes solitary insects ...
The Locust Plague of 1874, or the Grasshopper Plague of 1874, occurred in the summer of 1874 when hordes of Rocky Mountain locusts invaded the Great Plains in the United States and Canada. The locusts swarmed over an estimated 2,000,000 square miles (5,200,000 km 2 ) and caused millions of dollars' worth of damage.
The largest swarms can cover hundreds of square miles and contain billions of locusts. A locust can eat its own weight (about 2 grams) in plants every day. That means one million locusts can eat more than one tonne of food each day, and the largest swarms can consume over 100,000 tonnes each day. [87]
Swarm Year Location Size Type Plagues of Egypt: Not verified Egypt: Desert locust: Locust Plague of 1874: 1874 United States: Rocky Mountain locust: Albert's swarm: 1875 United States: 3.5 – 12.5 trillion Rocky Mountain locust: 1915 Ottoman Syria locust infestation: 1915 Israel, Lebanon, and Syria: 2003–2005 Africa locust infestation: 2003 ...