Locust Insect: Types, Attack, Swarm, Species, Details, Facts, Images & More

Locust seems like harmless grasshoppers, but it one of the dangerous insect in the world. The species is developed with the mixture of several short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. This breed does not belong to any genus or subfamily but the member of grasshoppers. Then there is no taxonomic distinction between Locust and grasshopper species as they are similar in structure. Locust gets distributed all over the world, and it is a long-distance migrator as a destructive swarm. This creatures are solitary in nature and avoid contacting each other. They will wait for a perfect condition to join, after heavy rain the contact of the insects are unavoidable. They meet each other and become a swarm within an hour of time. This insect grows up to the length of 1.25 to 7.5 cm. You can find this creature in all continents around the world except Antarctica and North America. Moreover, these insects are most common in Africa and Asia.

Species of Locust

Locust is the only hybrid species of the grasshopper. So it does not have any subspecies.

Related: Blue Morpho

Interesting Facts about Locust

• Basically, grasshoppers do eat meat, but they do not hunt any creatures. They eat the flesh of roadkills, but never kill and consume humans. The swarm of locusts is not a group of killers until you are a plant. The insects are most dangerous for plants and crops in the fields.
• After crossing one or two successive generations, they automatically change their colour and shape. The creatures will be in bold yellow or green, but sometimes the solitary locusts will be in neutral brown.
• The large group of the species can completely eat the leaves and stems of plants such as forbs and grasses. But some of them will consume a variety of plants and other has a quite specific diet. It mostly eats dry plants which fall in the ground and search for food till it dies.
• The Locust creates the humming sound by rubbing legs and wings against their body. They can hear other hum sounds through the ears on their abdomen.
• These insects can eat equal its weight every day and a swarm of Locust in such size will eat 423 million pounds of plants every day.
• Locust swarms are a huge threat to agricultural as it destroys the crops and pasture which jeopardises many livelihoods. The invasions of the creature will create an ominous solar eclipse-like effect. Then within a moment, the plague of locusts will attack every crop, tree and blade of grass in their path.
• In 2019, Migrating Locust swarms were invaded into the Northern parts of Gujarat and causing significant damage to agriculture lands. The destruction done by the creatures is not seen in the last two decades. Everyone thinks that it was migrated from Pakistan and entered into India via Rajasthan and reached Gujarat.
• In the year 1954, the plague of locusts moved from Africa all the way to Britan while crossing they decimated all the crops along their way. Then another swarm migrated from Africa to the Caribbean in 1988. This massive crowd can travel up to 160 kilometres a day.

Locust Images

Check out some pics of desert locust,

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