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Desert Locust — printable fact sheet
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Desert Locust
Schistocerca gregaria
Schistocerca gregaria is not really one animal but two, and the switch between them is one of the most dramatic transformations in the insect world. In its solitarious phase it is a shy, green or sandy, well-camouflaged grasshopper that actively avoids other locusts. Crowd it — …
Did you know?
- Desert Locust swarms have been reported to destroy enough crops in a day to feed 35,000 people.
- The serotonin trigger was pinned down in 2009, and injecting the chemical into a solitary locust makes it turn gregarious without any crowding at all. Swarming locusts turn conspicuous black and yellow partly because they load up on toxic compounds from the plants they eat and no longer need to hide. A single swarm the size of Paris can eat as much food in a day as roughly half the population of France. The locust's plague cycles are why it is one of the very few insects with a permanent international monitoring service, run by the FAO, that tracks breeding in remote deserts by satellite.
What I learned
Draw the desert locust
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