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24: Series 5
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Contents
 Locusts in history and literature
Latest findings
Locusts in history and literature - Contents
According to the Bible, a swarm of locusts comprised the eighth plague in the story of the plagues of Egypt. In the Book of Revelation locusts with scorpion tails and human faces are to torment unbelievers for five months when the fifth trumpet sounds. One Old Testament book, Joel, is written in the context of a recent locust plague. Interestingly, the locusts are described in four different ways - "swarming locusts, cutting locusts, hopping locusts and destroying locusts." Although these were identified by the old Authorised Version as four different creatures, modern translations correctly identify them as four kinds of locusts. This fits with the many molts (called instars) that locusts go through. For example, the "hopper" probably denotes the larval stage (the first instar), the wings are not developed and the larva hops about. For more information about the locusts in Joel, see Raymond Dillard in Minor Prophets Vol 1, ed Thomas McComiskey.In Plato's Phaedrus Socrates says that locusts were once human. When the Muses first brought song into the world, the beauty so captivated some people that they forgot to eat and drink until they died. The Muses turned those unfortunate souls into locusts—singing their entire lives.In her novel On the Banks of Plum Creek Laura Ingalls Wilder writes of a "glittering cloud" of locusts so large it blocked out the sun as it approached. The swarm descended upon her family's farm near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, destroying a year's wheat crop, and stripping the prairie bare of all vegetation.In O.E. Rølvaag's Giants in the Earth, a novel about Norwegian pioneers on the Dakota prairie, these creatures decend upon the settlement of Spring Creek. He masterfully describes the onslaught: "And now from out the sky gushed down with cruel force a living, pulsating stream, striking the backs of the helpless folk like pebbles thrown by an unseen hand; but that which fell out of the heavens was not pebbles, nor raindrops, nor hail for it would have lain inanimate where it fell; this substance had no sooner fallen that in popped up again, crackling, and snapping--rose up and disappeared in the twinkling of an eye; it flared and flittered around them like light gone mad; it chirped and buzzed through the air; it snapped and hopped along the ground; the whole place was a weltering turmoil of raging little demons; if one looked for a moment into the wind one saw nothing but glittering, lightinglike flashes--flashes that came and went, in the heart of the cloud made up of innumerable dark-brown clicking bodies!"
Latest findings - Contents
The extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust has been a source of puzzlement. Recent research suggests that the breeding grounds of this insect, in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, came under sustained agriculture, destroying the underground eggs of the locust. The farming of those valleys was a response to the large influx of gold miners (see the article on this locust).Research at Cambridge University has identified the swarming behaviour is a response to overcrowding. The trigger is increased tactile stimulation of the hind legs. Several contacts per minute over a four hour period are sufficient to induce transformation to the swarming variety. |
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