Grasshopper: A Small Insect With A Voracious Appetite
Interestingly, the grasshopper can triple its size by transmuting. Thus, the pests of these animals are capable of ingesting up to 100,000 tons of plants in a single day.
This animal has been known since ancient times. In fact, in one of the oldest books in history, the Bible, this seemingly harmless insect is said to have been the protagonist of one of the plagues in Egypt. We’ll talk about it in detail below!
Grasshopper: small but voracious
Many think that locusts are harmless animals, and they are, but only when they are alone.
Thus, it is possible to say that this animal has a kind of “double life”. Alone, they are harmless animals that just want to live happily, jumping in the fields.
They are lonely and tend to live that way. However, at some point in their lives, they may have the opportunity to live with many other individuals of their kind.
When they gather in large groups, the locusts become very destructive, eating and destroying any vegetation they find in their path.
Living together makes them behave differently. In other words, they change their personality and also their way of life.
Thus, they take advantage of the “unity is strength” and become an unbeatable swarm that devastates everything in its path.
Obviously, this transformation doesn’t happen with all locusts. However, there is a rough estimate that it happens in 10 of the eight thousand species that exist.
locust clouds
When the locusts gather, they can cover areas of 1.2 thousand kilometers. As such, there may be around 80 million of these animals per square kilometer.
Now we understand a little more than the Bible says about the plague of ancient Egypt! It was thanks to this story, regardless of whether it is true or not (everyone has their opinion), that we began to investigate this animal more deeply.
They are able to travel about 200 kilometers a day at about two thousand meters high. Also, the most impressive thing is that they can devour a huge field in a single day. Up to one hundred thousand tons of plants in 24 hours! They really are devastating animals!
One of the best known pests of these animals today occurred on the island of Madagascar, a place that practically lives off agriculture.
In 2012, the existence of locust clouds reached an extreme point, which generated large losses in this field and, therefore, serious measures had to be taken.
The government started a fumigation that was supposed to take place over a four-year period, but lacked funds to complete it.
Despite this, she ended up being submitted. However, before that, another large outbreak of these insects emerged in Africa, Australia and southern Europe.
When do locusts gather?
When they become adults, locusts can even triple in size. Over the course of life, they change color, shorten their body, which soon after stretches, and their brain grows.
Once the shift is complete, they release pheromones that attract other specimens and begin to reproduce, until they create a huge swarm that won’t separate anymore.
