The statements in this article are based on reliable sources of information and are detailed at the end of the article
A Xiaoqiang can barely cope with flying around in the sky, so how to solve it if hundreds of Xiaoqiang gather into a "Xiaoqiang cloud", what's even worse is that this creature is smaller and stronger than Xiaoqiang.
They do not need male and female mating, can not find the female of the object to lay eggs on their own, a single female can lay 200~1000 eggs in a lifetime, and it only takes a month from a small worm to an adult.
The lone insects are scattered, and as the team grows, they will become social groups, and the most serious one is that hundreds of millions of insects cover dozens of kilometers of rice fields, although they are small, but thieves can eat them.
They are herbivorous insects, most like to live in Asia and Africa, the most favorite to eat is fat leaves, such as sweet potato, water spinach, Chinese cabbage, etc., an adult can eat food equivalent to 3~5 times its body weight in a day.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has given a set of astonishing data, the number of insects in 1 square kilometer is as high as 4000~80 million, and they eat the food of 35,000 people for a whole day.
01
"Witnesses" of the rise and fall of historical dynasties
Their stomach occupies most of the space in their abdominal cavity, and there are toothed forceps on their mouths, so that they can eat horizontally and vertically, and the eating speed is also 3~4 times that of other insects, and they can eat and digest at the same time, and their intestines are long and thin, so they can quickly process and absorb a large amount of food.
They have a wide variety of digestive enzymes in their bodies that can break down a variety of different types of plant tissues, so they are hardly picky eaters and have a wide range of diets.
Their energy conversion mechanism is very efficient, and they can quickly convert the food they eat into energy in a short period of time to support their high-intensity activity needs, and this eating, running, and annoying creature is the locust.
Locusts have developed with the mainland for thousands of years, as we all know, the mainland has been an agricultural power since ancient times, the mainland was deeply troubled by locusts in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it was written in the Book of Songs that farmers prayed that the crops in their fields would not be harmed by "moths", and "moths" said that locusts.
During the Tang and Song dynasties, locusts were rampant, and few crops survived where the locusts reached, and there were even "locust expulsion envoys" and "locust catching envoys" at that time, which were specifically responsible for organizing and directing the work of exterminating locusts.
It is recorded in the "New Tang Dynasty Book" that in the fourth year of Kaiyuan, there was a locust plague in Shandong, and the farmers saw that their vegetable fields were ruined by locusts little by little, and there was no way at all, but they looked at the "locust cloud" and did not dare to approach at all, so they could only kneel and ask for the blessing of the Bodhisattva.
At that time, people's ideological concepts were backward, and they felt that the locust plague was a natural disaster, and God was unhappy and sent these 300 million "heavenly generals" to punish the world.
It is not too much to say that the locusts witnessed the rise and fall of the Tang Dynasty, and in the Ming Dynasty, the locusts are still haunted.
It can be seen that the locusts of the Ming Dynasty were no longer satisfied with the fields, and they all went to the cities and towns to "burn and plunder", but at that time, knowledge agriculture was backward, and people had few ways to fight the locust plague, so they could only choose to let God calm their anger.
02
All fear comes from a lack of firepower
Relevant data show that from 707 B.C. to the next 2,700 years, the mainland territory of large and small locust plague as high as more than 940 times, the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China period was the most serious, locust swarms almost every year, caused by famine even more extended.
The locust plague is also divided into explosive and slow-onset nature, as the name suggests, explosive is in a very short period of time locust swarms rushing to the face, slow-onset is caused by the old, weak, sick and disabled locusts, slow-onset is less destructive than explosive.
In 1933, a locust plague was particularly shocking, affecting 12 provinces on the mainland, and this disaster was called "the year of the Chinese locust".
In the past, it was not that locusts were left untreated, but the conditions were limited and it was useless to control them, and the most effective of them was to use biological chains to reduce the number of locusts.
During the Republic of China, many countries were plagued by locusts all year round, so they participated in joint seminars on locust control in various countries, and the mainland only began to join the discussion in the 30s of the 20th century.
At that time, the West took the lead in throwing out several tools similar to pesticides and pesticides, and inspired by foreign countries, scientists in the mainland began to independently develop chemical agents for farmland management.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the mainland achieved remarkable results in controlling locusts, until 2008, when more than 90 million acres of land in China were eaten by locusts, and the main culprits were flying locusts and soil locusts.
This is because global warming and the development of industry have led to environmental damage, which once again provides a comfortable living environment for locusts, whose favorite is the climate around the Yellow River, which is high and arid.
The mainland has been struggling with "drought, flooding, and locusts" for a long time, and due to the climate and topography of the continent, no matter which of these three disasters occurs, it is extremely destructive.
Although the Yellow River was dry at that time, there was a vast area of saline-alkali land in the middle and lower reaches, which was a paradise for locusts, and they would fly out in summer and autumn.
In 2014, a villager in Boai County, Henan Province found that there were a lot of "grasshoppers" in his field, and the villagers who were frightened by this scene immediately reported the situation to the village brigade, and soon, the village brigade used aircraft spraying, manual spraying, and net isolation to solve the 3,000 acres of beachhead encirclement, and it took only one morning to solve the locust plague.
Agronomic experts say that these locusts will burp within 36 hours after being exposed to pesticides, and they can't fly no matter how they fly, so locusts are simply vulnerable to efficient and fast hardcore control.
The agricultural and forestry aircraft used that day was the "Bee No. 4", which could spray 800 acres of fields at a time, and flew a total of 13 sorties that day, plus the cooperation of 400 villagers, to quell the locust plague.
03
The best protection is to preserve nature
In recent years, the mainland has been improving the ecological environment in accordance with the principle that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," and has carried out major changes in many places, especially in river basins.
In 2020, locusts from Southeast Asia almost flew to the mainland, when the Ministry of Rural Agriculture responded that the mainland citizens should not worry too much, even if they came, it was East Asian locusts instead of desert locusts.
The desert locust swarm from India could not hold up the rainforest on the border between Myanmar and Yunnan, and the East Asian locusts from the north could not penetrate the northeast of the continent.
We also have remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS) and big data for monitoring and early warning, which can monitor locust numbers, migration paths and reproduction in real time.
Compared with traditional chemical control, biological control is more eco-friendly and sustainable, and the mainland is also actively exploring the use of natural enemy insects, pathogenic microorganisms and biological pesticides to control locust populations.
For example, locust density can be effectively reduced by releasing natural enemy insects and locust parasitic wasps, predatory insects, etc. At the same time, the use of pathogenic microorganisms and microsporidia can specifically control locust populations without affecting other organisms.
Locusts may still be usable organisms, some reports show that locusts have an unusually sensitive sense of smell, some scientists have put locusts into the vapor of TNT, DNT and other explosives, found that they can quickly sense danger, so scientists want to use locusts to identify explosives.
In addition, locusts are not eaten if they want to, ordinary locusts are fine, and there is indeed a wealth of protein in the body, if you accidentally eat the locusts in the locust plague, it will be troublesome.
There is a volatile toxic compound phenylacetonitrile in the body of the social locust, which is good to be dizzy and dizzy after eating, and it may take your life in severe cases.
In any case, the locust plague is already a rare disaster on the mainland, thanks to the selfless dedication of the mainland's scientists, and in the future, everyone should also pay attention to protecting the ecological environment, after all, human beings cannot do without nature.
Resources:
[1] People's Political Consultative Conference Network: 2014.08.29 3,000 acres of Yellow River beach in Henan suffered a locust plague, and the sky was as dark as a net
[2] The Paper: Notes on Strange Narratives|1644 Locust Plague: Locusts "Surrounded People and Ate Them"
[3] China National Defense News: Using locusts to identify explosives