1. Locust look like a common grasshopper having two big hind legs for hop or jump.
2. Normally, they live a solitary life and dry spells before rain force them to huddle together in small patches of green land. As they come close, a hormone (serotonin) makes them more sociable. When it rains, they reproduce rapidly and enter their gregarious phase in which their bodily capabilities get enhanced.
3. They fly in swarms of millions, and quite rapidly causing massive crop damage. Locust swarms are typically in motion and can cover vast distances nonstop.
4. Locust swarms devastate crops and cause major agricultural damage, which can lead to famine and starvation. Locusts occur in many parts of the world, but today locusts are most destructive in subsistence farming regions of Africa.
5. Desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) is a notorious species found in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, this species inhabits an area of about six million square miles, or 30 countries, during a quiet period.
6. During a plague, when large swarms descend upon a region, however, these locusts can spread out across some 60 countries and cover a fifth of Earth's land surface. Desert locust plagues threaten the economic livelihood of a tenth of humans.
7. A desert locust swarm can be 460 square miles in size and pack between 40 and 80 million locusts into less than half a square mile. Each locust can eat its weight in plants each day, so a swarm of such size would eat 423 million pounds of plants every day.
8. Locust plagues will worsen in a warming world. Rising sea temperatures are causing prolonged bouts of wet weather, including a surge of rare cyclones in eastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula where desert locusts thrive.
9. Weather patterns and historical locust records help experts predict where swarms might form. Once identified, an area is sprayed with chemicals to kill locusts before they can gather.
10. A locust swarm the size of Paris can eat the same amount of food in one day as half the population of France.
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