After everything has passed, there will be problems, and so will locusts, and more will become a plague.
Locust plagues, droughts and floods have long been known as the three major natural disasters, which shows how powerful locust plagues are.
In a less smooth year of 2020, locusts with an army of about 50 kilometers wide set off from East Africa and began to spread to Asia, sweeping across India and Pakistan, where plants and crops were eaten away, and the United Nations predicts that the locust plague in East Africa will face food problems for about 19 million people.
What are locusts and locust plagues?
If you are lucky enough to grow up in the countryside, you must have played with locusts, locusts are also called "grasshoppers", is the general name of the orthoptera locust family, there are more than 10,000 species in the world, and our country also has more than 1,000 species.
Locust plagues are worldwide disasters that have been raging on us and happened frequently. According to historical records, it occurred every 8.8 years during the Qin and Han dynasties, and it occurred once in 1.6 years in the Yuan Dynasty.
In the past, there was not enough understanding of locusts, and there was no strong scientific support, and people who regarded food as their lives even called locusts "locust gods", and once there was a locust plague, people would think that it was the punishment of heaven for mankind.
After the locusts pass, it often means famine, and after the famine, it is a scene of hunger and death.
In the era of hunger, the plague of locusts, in the Tang Dynasty, the habit of eating locusts arose, locust protein content is very high, but at that time people were conservative in their thinking, thinking that eating locusts would anger the heavens and bring more misfortune, so even if there were batches of locusts at that time, they could not solve the problem of hunger.
Now the situation is completely different, we not only eat locusts, but also have the famous "insect feast", when the locust plague in East Africa occurred, there was also a "locust as long as you come to China, you can eat them all" paragraph, the paragraph is a paragraph after all, the right to be a pleasure, do not take it seriously.
If you have carefully observed the locusts, you will find that the common locusts in childhood, the chinese sword horn locusts with green bodies, almost all appear alone, and scientists also believe that under normal circumstances, locusts rarely appear in batches, so why did the locusts flood this time? What makes them so gregarious?
The power of hunger
The protagonist of this locust plague is the desert locust, which lives in a barren area with little rain, affects 20% of the world's land surface, and unlike our common grasshoppers, this locust can fly long distances, fly for a day or two continuously, and can fly more than 150 kilometers.
Hunger is the main reason why so many locusts can gather in a short period of time and have been flying and migrating.
drought
Historically, locust plagues generally appeared in dry periods, and dry weather was conducive to reproduction.
Locusts lay their eggs in the soil, soil with soil moisture between 10-20% is the most conducive to the survival of eggs, and drought will lead to the drying up of small rivers and decreased vegetation coverage, so that locusts have more soil to lay eggs, coupled with the strong reproductive ability of locusts, can lay up to 200,000 eggs in 1 square meter of soil.
During the drought period, the appetite of locusts is also more crazy, sometimes the plants eaten into it are excreted without digestion, mainly to replenish water, therefore, the more drought period, the easier it is to lack food, once scarce, a large number of locusts will gradually move closer to the last vegetation area, and gradually, a large number of locusts will gather within a certain range.
The left group lives alone on the right
Locusts that live in groups on the left and solitary groups on the right will "blacken"
Scientific research believes that locusts like to live alone when supplies are abundant and are an inconspicuous insect. Their brownish-green bodies are camouflaged and blend into the background, and they walk in a slow gait.
When food shortages are forced together, a strange thing happens, gradually "blackening" and undergoing a dual personality transformation.
The hind legs of locusts are constantly stimulated by the same kind, which will produce pheromones, and after the same kind feels the pheromones, they will gradually converge, and the more locusts there are, the more concentrated the pheromones, and the more they will gather.
The body of the locust will also change, the serotonin level in the body has soared 3 times, becoming stronger and more aggressive, and the color has changed from brown to eye-catching yellow and black, which may be sending a poisonous signal to their predators,
The locusts, which have always been separate camps, after living in groups, become uniform like a leader, and move in the same direction, to a place, eat a place, and fly all the way to eat.
Although the locusts look gregarious, they are not as friendly as they might think.
Because the appearance of locusts living in groups and solitary is very different, scientists have mistakenly believed that this is two species, so relevant verification experiments have been carried out.
The first time, 20 locusts, showing their own state of play;
The second time, 60 locusts began to move in the same direction, the morphology also changed, and also became more aggressive, and when the final count was made, 1 locust was missing, confirmed to have been eaten by the same kind.
In other words, when living in groups, backwardness will be eaten, as long as the flight position is not correct, once exposed, it will become food for other locusts, which may be the reason why they fly neatly in one direction.
At last
Through our efforts, although the locust plague is frequent, it is often resolved before the situation is serious, and the reason why the locust plague has caused such a big impact is that it has experienced a major drought and flood, which has destroyed the natural balance.
According to reports, the number of locusts currently ravaging the three countries has increased by 64 million times to 360 billion, or 180 trillion if left unchecked.
Although the locusts are menacing, but there is no need to worry too much, the United Nations has not yet issued any notice of the "global emergency", from the perspective of climate and geographical environment, India is more suitable for the growth of locusts, unless India is exhausted, otherwise, locusts will not cross the mountains, across the desert and snowfields and many other unfavorable factors into our country.
Even if we do enter the country, our country has a long history of locust control, so there is no need to worry.