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There was also pictorial from The Guardian a few days ago, "Billions of locusts swarm through Kenya"[1] regarding this. https://www.theguardian.com/world/galle

• zentiggr 7y ago
  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.
  • mc32 7y ago
    Aside from pesticides, nets. Some places where bugs eat produce if not protected have nets covering and enclosing the whole farm.
    • Pfhreak 7y ago
      If the swarm is 960 square miles, and travels quickly, how much netting do you need?
  • thaumasiotes 7y ago
    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.
• Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
  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/group/locusts/ 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.
  • Zenst 7y ago
    > 200 billion locusts For context - there are 4 billion IPv4 addresses in total if that helps with scale of things for some.
    • ogre_codes 7y ago
      Talk about the internet of things...