What are locusts and what happened to them? (explosion-scratch.github.io)
186 points by explosion-s 4 days ago
password4321 10 hours ago
A nice weekend read that doesn't smell like AI but if you're short on time or interest:
Though the locusts had a huge migratory range stretching all the way to the eastern seaboard, its reproductive range was only a handful of river valleys in Wyoming and Montana. Once plowed, irrigated and trampled by livestock the species had nowhere left to lay eggs.
pimlottc 7 hours ago
This answers the title question but the most interesting part about the article is the fascinating way in which the locust’s behavior is triggered by crowding. An amazing biological adaption.
It’s well-worth reading the whole thing.
knollimar 7 hours ago
It was until the animated insects. I threw my phone
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago
AndrewKemendo 7 hours ago
brikym 3 hours ago
I couldn't help but think office politics is a bit like that. Over populate a company or starve employees of opportunities and thy will be less helpful to each other and more focused on self-promotion politics.
awesome_dude an hour ago
Aboutplants 8 hours ago
I immediately thought of how destroying the Monarch Butterfly wintering grounds in Mexico would have the same impact on Monarchs.
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago
Monarchs are threatened during migration. It’s about how many individuals survive the round trip to breed more.
Drought and fire are two natural factors that destroy their migration routes’ food supply. Another is agriculture.
Folks like Monarch Watch and Xerces encourage planting of the few milkwood species (ie weeds) that the butterflies depend on for energy or egg-laying.
Restoring prairie is also effective. But there’s still drought and wildfire.
delichon 5 hours ago
I disapprove of eminent domain but this is a great steelman case for it.
bentcorner 15 minutes ago
I'm trying not to spoil anything but this article reminds of this excellent short story: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/07/sins-of-the-children
daoboy 9 hours ago
My earliest introduction to locusts was as a biblical plague. These Sunday school lessons did not include pictures. I always imagined some twisted diminutive demonic swarm of insects, and was disappointed to finally discover they were just grasshoppers.
themgt 9 hours ago
> I always imagined some twisted diminutive demonic swarm of insects
Behavioral ecologist Stephen Simpson has proposed the cannibalistic forced march hypothesis[36], that is, the forward motion of a locust swarm is essentially sustained by each individual’s imperative to avoid being eaten by the locust behind it: 1) Align their body axis with neighbors (parallel) to minimize the chances of a side-on attack and present their narrowest possible profile to the individual behind. 2) March forward to bite and feed on the abdomen of the locust immediately ahead.
A billion crazed insects marching through eating all your crops while cannibalizing each other does seem relatively twisted and demonic.
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago
Also, there’s the stimulus causing nymphs to not be solitarious slow green grass-nibbles, but instead transform into armored, black and yellow, upright marching machines that mature into stronger-winged battle bugs. With soft tasty abdomens exposed to the soldier behind them…
krackers an hour ago
jezzamon 7 hours ago
I have been in a locust plague once. It does feel very weird. Yes they are grasshoppers but you might be underestimating just how many there are. Plus they don't look normal, they actually change appearance when they're in a plague.
One small detail I remember was when the sun was just behind a building, you could see this glow around the building which was the sun reflecting off all the locusts that were flying around it
TaupeRanger 7 hours ago
One locust is an interesting bug. Billions of locusts are an apocalyptic nightmare.
hagbard_c 9 hours ago
Put them under a microscope at 10-40 times magnification and you've got your demons. Claws and hooks and fang-like attachments everywhere, faceted eyes, crusty exterior. The western image of demons was partly derived from insectoid creatures by painters like Hieronymus Bosch so it makes sense for insects to look demonic.
delta_p_delta_x 41 minutes ago
> a phenomenon where a single genotype produces distinct phenotypes
Ah, so like how Wurmple may evolve into Silcoon or Cascoon and thence Beautifly or Dustox. Cool.
hankbond 3 hours ago
Love the UI design.
To OP: I have a very lateral thinking process during writing and I have been experimenting with how to format that in my personal site https://hankdoes.ai/posts/we-have-the-model-why-do-we-need-y...
Lots of Jank still at this point in its life but the hover to popover extra context has been really helpful to keep the main post body more focused than it would otherwise be. I'm not that good at structuring my thoughts yet because I'm so new at writing (the post I linked isn't even finished).
Really interested to see others who are clearly much farther along in their writing journey experimenting with asides and popovers. Your underline animation is very cute. I am trying out a click-to-expand-acronym typing animation that I thought was kind of whimsical.
gwern an hour ago
If you're interested in popups/popovers and sidenotes (https://gwern.net/sidenotes), be sure to check out my website. Did you notice OP also does inflation adjustments (https://gwern.net/static/build/Inflation.hs)? I do them inline, because I think that requiring effort like OP does just leads to the same pervasive lack of numerosity that providing no adjustments at all does, because no one is going to bother to hover over most of them.
dnnddidiej 8 hours ago
Trigger warning: animated insect crawls on screen.
marcosdumay 7 hours ago
Seems to be changed now. The grasshoppers are now static until you click on them.
Or maybe it's my browser.
acomjean 4 hours ago
I think it’s just your browser. They got me.. just enough off the main text to give a little jump..
sovietswag 5 hours ago
Scared the shit out of me!!!!! Lmfao
torben-friis 8 hours ago
Yes, this should be higher. I fucking hated that.
cubefox 6 hours ago
I liked it. You can tap on them and they hop.
FarmerPotato 2 hours ago
It’s not just science reporting. It’s visceral.
jeremytarpley 9 hours ago
Great article. I'm also impressed by the design of the webpage itself. Love the typography and clever UI.
marking-time 5 hours ago
Loved the design and the grasshopper had me pawing at my screen to make it go away!
cbdevidal 8 hours ago
The jumping grasshoppers at the bottom really surprised me :-)
swiftcoder 5 hours ago
They are interactive too!
swiftcoder 8 hours ago
> All of these triggers cause a release of serotonin. This serotonin release triggers the physical transformation
Locusts are just grasshoppers on prozac?
PaulDavisThe1st 5 hours ago
Prozac is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. It is not serotonin, and it does not cause the release of serotonin.
code_duck an hour ago
The uptake inhibition means it leaves serotonin in a place where it can be active. So, it increases the amount of serotonin available in the brain.
card_zero 8 hours ago
Is it really true about the unpalatable chickens? Every mention of "caloptine" that I can find is from 1878, and derives from the annual Report of the United States entomological commission, which expressed hope of making commercial locust products, mainly formic acid. That entomological comission is the cited Charles Riley. Nobody ever seems to mention the substance again.
skywhopper 8 hours ago
Took a few clicks to track down source 10: https://history.nebraska.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/doc_..., which in turn cites this book: https://www.amazon.com/Locust-Devastating-Mysterious-Disappe...
On that page you can click “read sample” and then search for “chicken” and the reference on page 3 seems to be the main source of that claim. Where that is quoting, I’m not sure.
card_zero 7 hours ago
Thanks! So the connection between the tainted taste (source on that still unknown) and this essential oil of locust is just Lockwood spitballing:
> Although the insects had no defensive chemicals in their bodies, a diet saturated with locusts rendered the eggs and flesh of chickens inedible. Studies at the time found that the locusts were remarkably rich in a “reddish-brown oil of very pungent and penetrating odor,” and perhaps this accounts for the tainted meat.
They were not "rich" in this oil:
https://archive.org/details/firstanuualrepor01unit/page/442/...
Oil, .004 percent. Still, a little oil can go a long way, so perhaps.
mapmeld 5 hours ago
I highly recommend one of the books cited in this article (Jeffrey A. Lockwood's Locust). He writes about hiking to the glacier to find preserved locusts, the formation of the Entomological Commission which discovered that existing anti-locust practices were ineffective, all sorts of details.
alserio 10 hours ago
Nice Easter egg
kasperset 10 hours ago
I almost jumped. Nice touch to the article
jcgrillo 9 hours ago
For a split second I thought there was an actual bug on my phone. It was an excellent article too!
appleappleapple 2 hours ago
The locust jump scare got me. Great article though - super fascinating. I had no idea an organism could effectively become a different species based on its environment.
archermarks 9 hours ago
Really interesting article! I knew about the phase polyphenism but the forced cannibalistic march theory was new to me.