> The windscreen wipers were not able to clear the windshield anymore. The crew went around, climbed to 8500 feet, depressurized the aircraft, opened the cockpit side window and cleaned the windscreen by hand. The same happened on second approach to Dire Dawa. The crew again climbed to 8500 feet, cleaned the windscreen by hand again and diverted to Addis Ababa.
"Locusts are the swarming phase of certain species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstances become more abundant and change their behaviour and habits, becoming gregarious" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locust
So, in normal circumstances, grasshoppers are benign but under certain conditions, they can form swarms.
Yes, been studied and shown it is overcrowding that causes this and you can by rubing the back legs of a grasshopper for about 30 mins(iirc maybe shooter time) and it will start to develop wings and change.
The rubbing of back legs in nature happens when you have high dense populations - overcrowding due to rushing for limited food in an area. Which evolving wings and flying elsewhere would be nature at play.
Real trick would be to curtail grasshopper numbers before they swarm and perhaps a more balanced approach to grasshoppers natural enemies and encouraging habits for those will do well. Chemicals for me are a desperate solution to a problem that got overlooked. Much the same way that ant do wonders with many pests for plants, yet production methods end up curtailing environments that see them thrive in area's that would benefit. So we end up with chemicals for things like aphids when ants will eat them all up for you.
I'm not pro-chemical, but it's hard to imagine other solutions that are actionable in the timeframe of a weather prediction (this timeframe is critical because these swarms were spawned due to weather anomalies). Indeed, according to TFA it sounds like the UN isn't even trying to curtail the locusts at all but are just preparing for disaster recovery.
Crop insurance seems like a more tractable solution.
I think the problem is rather that they destroy crops than insurance; farmers probably can't grow crops in time before another swarm destroy them.
As for stopping them, I would try covering a wide enough area with a giant electric net (just like those insects killers) also placing additional screening nets on the upper and lower side so that the screens would keep birds away, and the actual electric net would have its holes large enough so that smaller insects would remain mostly untouched. The idea is that if they're stupid enough, they will eat all crops in vicinity then eventually die attempting to attack the only remaining field.
Why it shouldn't? The purpose is to attract and exterminate locusts when it becomes the only field in vicinity with intact crops. Build a strip of nets large enough to cover some area where the locusts will travel during migration, and they'll attempt to feed from the fields underneath. Sure it will be costly, but we're talking about decades old technology and cheap materials.
That page says at the top that locusts are grasshoppers.
"Locusts are a collection of certain species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae that have a swarming phase."
They are grasshoppers that have decided to change behaviour and physical characteristics for some reason. They used to be considered different species.
> So we end up with chemicals for things like aphids when ants will eat them all up for you.
The ants species I know of "milk" aphids for their sugary excretion, and as a counter service, protect aphids from their predators (such as ladybugs). It's... complicated. I agree with you that chemicals shouldn't be the first thing to reach for. It's interesting to try to find out how we got into this situation in the first place. The book Seeing like a State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State) has some interesting (but opiniated, in my opinion) notes on disastrous (on many axes - socially, economically, ecologically, ...) modernist agricultural reform programs that took place in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia in the second half of the 20th century — a region much affected by these locust clouds.
A production rate of 32 locusts per person per 16-hour workday isn't enough to matter unless you have a small army of people rubbing grasshopper legs together all day, I'd think. Though it is a pretty funny image.
The grasshoppers self-activate as locusts under crowded conditions. Once they enter the swarming phase, the behaviour is self-perpetuating, generally until foid supplies are exhausted. With high mobility, this can take time and strip tremendous areas of land.
By stocking a sufficient population early on, in sufficient confinement,, it might be possible to create a perpetuating, expanding, swarm.
Looks like grasshoppers generally live 50ish days as an adult. That's gonna put some serious limits on your max per-grasshopper-leg-rubber total accumulated grasshoppers.
The rubbing only increased serotonin levels and 4-3 hours later after that boost, they transform. So if you was to increase their serotonin levels via other means, you would still only turn grasshoppers into locusts. Yes locusts metabolism in faster, so they are more veracious.
As a form of terrorism, well you would still need to bread and or/find a huge swarm of grasshoppers and if you found such a size large enough, they would already naturally be swarming. Though the prospect of some terrorist group breaking grasshoppers has an edge of Chris Morris about it that bemuses me.
Fascinating that it is related to serotonin! I wonder if an antagonist would prevent the behaviour? Might be challenging to dose large numbers of locusts.
Maybe target them with commercials for pro-depressants? Feeling restless, gregarious, like you just might take ravenous flight? Ask your locust doctor if pro-depressants are right for you.
Then we just need some sexually attractive locusts to lobby the locust doctors and problem solved!
I was very surprised when I first learned this fact a few weeks ago. It's hard to think of another species that acts so differently in a pack, very similar to humans in my view.
The Indian Ocean Dipole event did nobody much good. It's been attributed for the very low rainfall (and bushfires) across Australia in 2019 as well as the higher than usual rainfall (and locusts) in east Africa.
There're some entertaining control measures being suggested in the comments. To my knowledge, the best control measure is pesticide application programs that use modeling to suggest optimal treatment locations. If you can develop a better locust population model, FAO would likely be interested.
Locusts are a solved problem in most parts of the world. Insecticides do work.
I understand that this is HN and people are interested in drones, lasers, genetic engineering, etc. but in cases like this it's better to use proven solutions rather than experiment.
There is no more ferocious predator than humans. If they became a delicacy all over the world they wouldn't stand a chance in hell.
According to the wikipedia article: "Locusts yield about five times more edible protein per unit of fodder than cattle, and produce lower levels of greenhouse gases in the process."
I always wondered why they're not collected and fed to chickens. Seems like a flock of fowl of any kind would gorge on these juicy bugs. Even a small inset net should harvest a good amount.
Oh my. One swarm is ~2400 square kilometers/~930 square miles, and could contain up to 200 billion locusts. And moving at 150km per day. Madness. You can understand why various cultures have viewed them as a punishment from god.
Here's this quote from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/gro...: "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." This is describing a swarm a "mere" 460 sq miles in size.
That's unbelieveable... I can't imagine that there's any real way to control swarms that large, and the idea of burning the entire country clean to starve them out seems a bit counterproductive.
There's a good scene depicting a locust swarm in Things Fall Apart.
The traditional village that is the subject of the (fictional) story sees swarms as a blessing -- they may eat crops, but you can harvest and eat the locusts themselves, and there are so many.
At 150 kilometers per day, they could cover the 3,500 km between Egypt and India in 20 days. Of course they're not covering that much distance every day, but they can jump between distant sources of food very quickly, so smaller gaps between crops or across deserts won't stop them.
Having predators isn't an issue. There will be plenty, just there are so many locusts. So many that even after all the predators are filled to bursting, there won't be a noticeable drop in the numbers.
The kenyan government is unprepared to handle this incident despite earlier warnings, the local minister cited a lack of an effective chemical in the local market, adding that the fight against the insect has been slowed down by the long procurement and import bureaucracies.
When the article says its the worst in 25 years, does that mean the historical record only goes back 25 years or that a worse invasion happened in 1995? From what I can see Wikipedia has an article for an infestation in 2004 and mentions 1989 as a previously notably bad situation in western Africa.
So my guess for deterring these pests would be a setup with high-intensity mid-ultraviolet LEDs (200-300 nm) pointed upwards, which should render large proportions of the exposed population sterile if not dead (sterile might be better than dead if it inhibits effective mating). 300 nm is about the limit for ionizing DNA. Humans can be advised to avoid the lamps.
The inverse square law being what it is, I think the power requirements alone of such a solution would render it impossible, and the LEDs would need to be insanely high intensity (I doubt they actually exist).
Imagine the source of protein you'd get! While probably not super handy (as it only happens during swarming times) and maybe even ecosystem-disruptive, turning them in to food would be useful.
Wouldn't look at this as a farming avenue, more a way to respond to such scaled issues using tools that may very well already exist or be modified to cater for such needs.
Certainly aware of crowd control sound weapons, I'd be supprised if the militaries of the world didn't have there own more powerful flavours begging for a PR test opportunity like this.
Now I wonder if there is a single resonant frequency that would work on all of them. The individual differences alone would be hard. Perhaps a general microwave type of weapon/harvester would work better?
Nice. Looks like frequencies from 10 to 20 khz may have a locust size wavelength. You might want to use half that frequency, and a very high power. Wonder if that would do anything to them
The swarms cover hundreds to thousands of square kilometres, and contain test to hundreds of billions of locusts. So no. There's no way to build enough sound weapons or focus them on billions of insects that move up to 150km per day.
I'm having trouble finding articles, but basically they used to weave large nets and string them along places where insects gathered. It was basically land fishing.
I think people might be surprised to learn just how easy it was to thrive in hunter-gatherer societies. Salmon and shellfish were effectively unlimited, so if you knew which native plants to eat (like wild onions, carrots and especially camas where I'm from), you could meet all of your daily macronutrient and vitamin/mineral needs on 2 hours of work per day.
Edit: here's also a concise list of edible plants and herbs with their effects:
Not sure where to being with this, but locust swarms like this are a force of nature. Maybe you could save your backyard garden with nets or cover, maybe. But not acres and acres of farmland.
>>Couldn’t they do something like stick up big electrified nets at the crop areas?
Over millions and tens of millions of acres? Not doable. Maybe a genetic tweak and then release them to neutralize the rest. Poison will probably kill other beneficial or not so dangerous insects. Either way, a locust party will ruin this year crops for the unfortunate farmer being visited. This is even worst since Africa is already poor
I wonder how drones would fair flying thru this, as on scale a locust in relation to the engines upon a drone is large in relation of a bird to an aeroplane engine.
Thank you, suspected as much but just didn't know. Was pondering drone fishing fleets harvesting such swarms, back to the mental drawing board then for me.
I understand that, we can make 'high protein flour' out of crickets[1] it seems like we should be able to process Locusts into some sort of protein source for human consumption.
But it is really hard to actually visualize/imagine these swarms without actually being there in one. The amount of infrastructure you would have to deploy essentially on a short term basis[2] is really infeasible with current technology.
[2] Swarms are a function of environmental conditions, they grow exponentially but they die quickly when conditions change, it is the series of monsoons at the right time that have made this one so big. In "regular" years they are much smaller.
That would mitigate the problem, but I don't think that could be used as a food source to replace what they destroyed, they eat up to their own weight per day, however insect digestion is pretty inefficient, they leave a lot of nutrients behind, so eating them up would only partially replace the losses.
Also catching a substantial fraction of a swarm that is spread over a very very large area and moves by up to 150 km a day would be very hard, and is largely impossible currently.
Exactly. The thought though was that if you created systems for processing locusts into flour around the area then that might incentivize people to catch and bring them locusts. If that became a regular thing it would keep populations down so that even in ideal swarm conditions the growth would not be as severe.
And it could provide an indigenous economic stream, always a good thing in Africa.
Honestly I think battery-powered drones with hardened or screened props would have the best shot against locusts. One of the main vulnerabilities for aircraft is the need to intake fresh air for combustion. This doesn't apply to drones. They also navigate using RF sensors and fly slow enough to avoid much collision damage. The locusts might start landing on them which could easily become incompatible with controlled flight, but that's the only thing that comes to mind.
Thank you for asking that and my apologies for not initially providing a context and by that poor omission opening up the very valid and fair possibility that I was being callous and uncaring. Also thank you for taking the time to raise that question instead of blindly judging and running with the worst case presumption, thank you.
I was thinking along the lines of fishing them as a food resources and drones with nets, but before I ran with that was wondering how well a drone would cope with such swarms and not something that the net did not offerup as a clear answer, either.
Ah, I see. I thought it was a random musing. My apologies then.
That being said regardless of the efficiency of such a solution I suspect that the scale of the invasion would make it hard to make a difference lest you have an army of drones at your disposal. The area to cover is insanely large.
No apology needed, and thank you for taking the time to comment your thoughts as without such feedback I would never of been able to clear things up.
[EDIT ADD] Indeed, if anything I should apologize as I'd left no context behind the question and leaving that open left the possibility of callous unthoughtfulness and you most kindly and rightly so, raised that aspect. Many would of just gone with a downvote - presumed the worst and ran with it in sillence, so again thank you for taking the time to question that. If I could mod you up more for that, I would.
[EDIT ADD - I was able to edit my initial reply as did seem you was being unfairly judged and I hope I've addressed that]
I think something more like a kite rig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_rig, but a net would be good. if they could be "thrown" up in the air quickly, have a sort of sticky inside so locust would be caught better, as they filled the net the net would become heavy and be brought down. The net should then be easily detachable somehow, attach another, throw up into the swarm.
Swarm passes by, the kite netters have a couple tons of locusts netted, a good harvest.
on edit: personally like because has such a 50s sci-fi feel to it.
I like the idea of kites, was thinking rockets and large net.
As for the Sci-fi, soon as you mentioned that I oddly thought of Dune, probably the rare resource mining aspect of such swarms and climate comparison going on there.
I just had a dig into what altitude they fly at and 2,000 meter ceiling would make things more complicated.
Hot air balloons dropping nets, or some weather balloons - again tethered. Though would probably want to run with hydrogen for costs, just safety and training go up, so greater initial costs there. So many details.
Kinda gets down to sky versions of submarine nets in predictable flight paths into crop area's as being the best spots to set such trapping nets up.
Though if it turns out you just need to lay down football sized green carpet and that attracts them - well that opens up other avenues in trapping or indeed - zapping them once they touch down.
How so? They didn’t say the safety of drones are more important than the people of East Africa. Drones could very well be used to help combat this crisis. Have you considered not being upset just for the fun of it?
This has already been addressed by Zenst, but this is a forum with a lot of engineers. Of course zenst was thinking about whether it's viable to use drones as a locust prevention measure, but you first have to start with whether drones can even fly in a locust swarm.
> The windscreen wipers were not able to clear the windshield anymore. The crew went around, climbed to 8500 feet, depressurized the aircraft, opened the cockpit side window and cleaned the windscreen by hand. The same happened on second approach to Dire Dawa. The crew again climbed to 8500 feet, cleaned the windscreen by hand again and diverted to Addis Ababa.