Swarms of locusts forced Somalia to declare a national emergency. Skin-crawling photos show how menacing their plagues can be.
Giulia Paravicini/REUTERS
Billions of desert locusts in East Africa are swarming at "unprecedented numbers" and pose a huge threat to the region's food insecurity, the UN warns.
The swarms are so bad that Somalia declared a national emergency. Ethiopia and Kenya are struggling to maintain the outbreak, and by Wednesday, swarms have moved over the Arabian Peninsula and reached both sides of the Persian Gulf.
The swarms are a result of heavy rainfall and cyclones over the past two years, which provide ideal environments for rapid breeding.
Photos reveal a skin-crawling look at locust plagues and how menacing they can be.
Africa's worst locust outbreak in decades is threatening the continent at an unprecedented scope. And there's no telling just how far the ravenous creatures will travel.
Desert locusts are the most destructive of all locust species — known for their speedy growth and enormous appetites. A swarm containing an estimated 200 billion locusts was recorded in Kenya, and each insect can eat its own weight in food. That equates to about as much food as 84 million people a day, according to a UN briefing.
Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer at the FAO, recently returned from northeast Somalia and told Business Insider that the locusts are like "a moving carpet of yellow and black objects" each behaving the same way, and packed together so densely that you can't even see the ground below them.
The insects have already destroyed hundreds and thousands of acres of crops in East Africa, and the UN is calling for international help to quell the crisis. They fear the numbers could grow 500 times by June and reach 30 different countries.
These photos show just how damaging the desert locust can be.
Desert locusts are the most notorious — and damaging — breed of locust. They're found in around 30 countries throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and can swarm through one-fifth of the landmass on Earth.
Feisal Omar/REUTERS
Sources: National Geographic, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Each locust in a swarm can eat its own weight in food per day. A small portion of an average swarm eats around the same amount as 10 elephants, or 2,500 people.
TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images
Source: National Geographic, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
A swarm can spread over 460 square miles, with 40 million to 80 million locusts per half-square mile.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Source: National Geographic
Author Laura Ingalls Wilder describes how terrifying a swarm can be in her book "On the Banks of Plum Creek." She wrote that she could feel the insects squishing beneath her feet and hear and the sound of "millions of jaws biting and chewing."
Ben Curtis/AP Photo
Source: The New York Times
During plague recessions, or "quiet periods," desert locusts typically live in very dry areas of Africa, the Middle East, and South-West Asia that receive fewer than eight inches of rain per year.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Locust plagues have been recorded since ancient Egypt, but there's no evidence to suggest plagues occur with any regularity. Rapid breeding occurs only when the climate is favorable, making them somewhat difficult to track.
Feisal Omar/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
In 1875, the largest locust plague in history turned US skies black, when a swarm 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide flew over the Midwest. Scientists believe there were trillions of "Rocky Mountain Locusts," a type of insect that's now extinct.
Culture Club/Getty Images
Source: The New York Times
But today's desert locusts are just as havoc-wreaking. According to Dominique Burgeon, an emergency services director at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the current outbreak in Africa is "an unprecedented situation."
TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images
Source: Scientific American
During plagues, desert locusts can spread over millions of miles and travel into parts of 60 countries. This affects over 20% of the earth's land surface, and according to the UN, plagues can damage the livelihoods for one-tenth of the world's population.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Plagues are defined as periods of one or more years of widespread infestations as a result of good breeding conditions. Throughout the 1900s, there were six recorded plagues. One of them lasted 13 years.
Reuters
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Favorable breeding conditions during plagues include moist, sandy soil, and green vegetation. Females can lay up to 158 eggs per egg pod, and are able to reproduce at least three times throughout their life.
Patrick Robert/Sygma/CORBIS/Sygma via Getty Images
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Before reaching adulthood, locusts are in an immature stage and referred to as "hoppers." Much like teenagers, this is when their appetites are the most ravenous, Cressman told Business Insider.
Ben Curtis/AP Photo
Eggs hatch in about two weeks and can reach adulthood anywhere between three weeks and nine months.
Feisal Omar/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Desert locusts can travel with the wind and easily cover over 90 miles per day, with the ability to stay in the air for a long time. Swarms have regularly crossed the Red Sea, which is 186 miles wide.
Amir Cohen/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
In 1954, a locust swarm traveled all the way from northwest Africa to Great Britain.
Reuters
Sources: National Geographic, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
In 1988, a swarm traveled over 3,000 miles in 10 days from West Africa to the Caribbean.
Amir Cohen/REUTERS
Sources: National Geographic, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
As desert locusts become more numerous, they change their behavior to be "gregarious,"and act as a part of a larger group. During this process their color changes from brown (solitary) to yellow and pink (gregarious).
Reuters
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
But that doesn't mean locusts are particularly friendly toward one another. They actually become cannibalistic during swarms, and insects that don't move with the flow of the group become easy targets for killing.
Amir Cohen/REUTERS
Source: World Economic Forum, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Locusts typically have a lifespan of about three to five months, depending on weather and ecological conditions. Since desert locusts breed so quickly, a plague can last longer than a decade.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Though swarms can look menacing, desert locusts do not outwardly attack people or animals, and there is no evidence to suggest they carry diseases.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
During locust plagues, pesticides are often sprayed from vehicles and small planes. But researchers have turned to non-chemical methods such as changing farming techniques, and focusing on pathogen and insect growth regulators instead.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Sources: NPR, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
But fighting locusts is an expensive battle. From 2003-2005, $450 million was spent to stop a desert locust plague in Africa that resulted in $2.5 billion worth of crop damage.
Baz Ratner/REUTERS
Source: Arizona State University
The current locust outbreak in East Africa is thought to have originated in Yemen, traveling over the Red Sea to Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Giulia Paravicini/REUTERS
Source: BBC
Unusual cyclones and periods of heavy rainfall from 2018-19 created an ideal environment for the insects to breed, according to the UN. Climate scientists blame this on rapidly warming oceans, and as swarms continue to grow, they fear the locusts will soon spread to multiple countries.
Njeri Mwangi/REUTERS
Sources: BBC, Wall Street Journal, UN News, New York Post
Cressman described the current outbreak as an upsurge, but warned that if it is not controlled, and the weather continues to favor locust breeding then a plague could be reached by the end of the year.
Ben Curtis/AP Photo
Source: Wired
This has been the largest outbreak of desert locusts in Somalia and Ethiopia in 25 years. In Kenya, an outbreak of this scope hasn't been seen in 70 years.
Feisal Omar/REUTERS
Source: UN News
The UN estimates that 24 million people are already facing food shortages from weather, general food insecurity, and locust invasions. In Ethiopia, the UN warned that eight million people may need food aid from locust crop attacks.
Giulia Paravicini/REUTERS
Source: Wall Street Journal
As of Wednesday, February 26, locusts have been detected in Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN fears that a new generation of locusts could coincide with the next planting and rain season in East Africa, which would make controlling the outbreak exponentially more difficult.
Ben Curtis/AP Photo
Sources: UN Press, Business Insider, AP, UN News
Additional swarms have been reported over the Arabian Peninsula, reaching both sides of the Persian Gulf. Ground control operations are currently underway in Saudi Arabia, while a new generation of breeding is in process in Yemen. Officials fear that swarms will spread as dense winds affect the Persian Gulf region.
Luke Dray/Getty Images
Source: FAO
At the beginning of February, Somalia became the first country to declare the current locust outbreak a national emergency, saying that the infestation "poses a major threat to Somalia's fragile food security situation."
Feisal Omar/REUTERS
Source: Al Jazeera
"The locusts have destroyed all of our grazing land, and I am very worried that my livestock will starve and die because these locusts are everywhere and are taking over the whole area," Abdulah Hassan, a herdsman in Somalia, told Business Insider Today.
Reuters
Source: Business Insider
The UN is currently seeking $138 million from international donors in order to "urgently support both pest control and livelihood protection operations in the three most affected countries."
TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images
Source: UN News, Business Insider
"The current control operations that are underway are not enough, simply because there is an insufficient amount of financial resources," Cressman told Business Insider. The UN fears that if they don't receive the proper funding as quickly as possible, millions of people will be threatened with food insecurity.
Ben Curtis/AP Photo
Source: UN Press Briefing
Read the original article on Business Insider
