Preface
In ancient farming times, farmers were most afraid of natural disasters.
And the locust plague, which can be classified as one of the three major pests in nature, is even more of a headache when you see it.
The main reason is that locusts are overwhelming every time they come, not only in large numbers but also in a wide range, making it far more harmful than other pests.
Between its harm, someone made a poem for it to describe its horror: "The flying locusts cover the sky and the sun is colorless, the old fields are weeping and bloody, the clothes are suddenly caught and can't be caught, and the big leaves are all empty and the small leaves are broken." ”
It's just that someone later discovered that we don't seem to have seen a locust plague for a long time, so where did all these "scourges" go?
One of the three major evils, everyone is disgusted, and the stench has been left for thousands of years
Locusts are a species, and anyone who mentions them will grit their teeth with hatred, and they know the truth that "a single tree cannot make a forest", and no matter what they do, they must "call friends and friends" to act together.
And he is never a picky eater, he eats anything, even leaves, weeds, clothes, and thatched huts.
Today, we know more than 10,000 species of locusts alone, including more than 800 in China, and their history can even be traced back to the Shang and Xia dynasties.
During the farming period, the appearance of locusts made the common people suffer a lot, because they only needed a short time to destroy people's hard work.
The peasants did not sit idly by, but resorted to eighteen kinds of martial arts, such as burning, spraying pesticides, making food and so on, but in the end they only treated the symptoms and not the root cause.
You know, locusts reproduce quite quickly, even if they only live for two to three months.
And different varieties, in different environments and temperatures, can reproduce two to three times a year, and a mature female locust can lay an average of 200 to 1,000 eggs in her lifetime.
On top of that, it only takes thirty-five days for them to be hatched to become adults.
In other words, they not only reproduce fast and have a short cycle, but their numbers can also increase exponentially, no wonder they can bring us so much harm.
Each locust needs to eat the same heavy food as itself every day, although a locust is only about two grams, but it can't bear the large number of them, 1 square kilometer locust can eat 35,000 people's food a day.
Another frightening point is the rate at which they migrate.
As we all know, in 2020, East Africa was ravaged by desert locusts, and the number of them was so large that it was the first time in decades.
And this group is still marching towards West and South Asia at a very fast pace, and wherever it passes, there is no grass.
In the face of such a terrifying enemy, India and Pakistan even chose to suspend the war and jointly defend against foreign enemies, which shows how terrifying the power of locusts is.
But for so many years, this kind of army of locusts that covers the sky and the sun has not appeared in China, is this thing still not a good look, only promising at home, and attacking hard.
Strike hard at the plague of locusts
Most of the food that locusts eat is grain, and although most of it is wasted, some of it remains in the body, and their bodies convert this energy into the energy needed by the body, which makes their bodies rich in protein.
It is one of the favorite foods of many birds, ducks, and frogs, and although these animals are natural enemies of locusts, they are not the ultimate cause of locust destruction.
Although it is possible to stop the infestation of locusts by spraying pesticides, although the situation is temporarily controlled, the land and vegetation are also contaminated, and there is no guarantee that the locusts will not become resistant in this situation.
Fungi are the most feared existence of locusts, locusts like to lay their eggs in the soil, and fungi also live in the soil.
The reason for the locust outbreak is that the survival rate of locust eggs is too high, and generally speaking, if the rainfall is normal, the soil is well hydrated, and the fungus grows actively, the survival rate of locust eggs will be low.
On the contrary, if there is a drought, the soil moisture content is too low, which will lead to the slow growth rate of fungi, and the survival rate of locust eggs will be higher in an environment without external interference, which is also the basic reason for the formation of locust plagues.
The person who discovered this was none other than Academician Ma Shijun, who led his research team after returning to China, regardless of hardships, and conducted many experiments to reach this conclusion.
In this regard, he also put forward the direction and policy of "combining restructuring and eradicating locust infestation", so that the locusts on the mainland did not overflow.
The solution is also very simple, it is to maintain the moisture of the soil, even in places with low rainfall, you can also maintain soil moisture through artificial rainfall, which still makes the fungus active and inhibits the survival rate of insect eggs.
To this end, researchers on the mainland have developed a fungal liquid through many experiments, and whenever they find that the density of locusts has increased abnormally, they will spray the fungus solution, so that the locusts are infected and sick and die in large numbers.
Although, in a way, locusts are pests that like to eat food, it is undeniable that in the eyes of some foodies, it has become a "beneficial insect".
Locusts are eaten as an "endangered species" and need to be farmed in captivity
In ancient times, many people were famine by locusts, and they had reached the point where they had nothing to eat, so they began to choose to eat Yizi, and Tang Taizong, who saw this scene, was very angry, so he picked up the worm and stuffed it into his mouth.
His move frightened the ministers, and they all said that this insect was very dirty and could not be eaten, but Li Shimin didn't care and said: "I am suffering for the people, what can I do!" ”
It was also Li Shimin, a generation of British lords, who was the first to eat crabs, letting us know that locusts can also be eaten.
It's just that Li Shimin swallowed it directly and ate it raw, and we processed and cooked it in a variety of ways to make it a delicacy on our table.
Now it has already become a snack dish in the eighteen monsters of Yunnan, its meat is soft, very tender, and has high nutritional value.
According to surveys, locusts contain more than 70 percent of the protein in their bodies, while beef contains only more than 20 percent of the protein, a difference of nearly three times.
Due to the decline of locusts in nature, the supply of barbecue restaurants has shrunk significantly, and it is said that there are now professional households specializing in locust breeding, which is enough to see that locusts are deeply loved in the local area.
In addition, biologists have found that locusts can "sniff" the gap between cancer cells and healthy cells, and even distinguish between different cancer cell systems.
This is another milestone for the medical community, because no machine can compare to the sense of smell of living things.
epilogue
No matter what kind of biosphere or what class of animals, it has its mission.
It is hoped that in the future, biologists will be able to obtain further research results from locusts and contribute to the medical community.
Sources of information in this article:
[1] China Biotechnology Network, 2022-08-08. The latest research has found that locusts can "sniff" human cancer
[2] Huanqiu.com, 2020-01-18. A horrific locust plague hits East Africa: a single locust is finger long, 150 million locusts per square kilometer