When they talk about the invasion of insects, "ten Egyptian plagues" are immediately remembered. That is, the calamities that the Lord sent to the Egyptians because Pharaoh did not want to free the sons of Israel from slavery. The times of the pharaohs have long ago sunk into oblivion, but people all over the world still suffer from invasions of all kinds of insects …
WIND TEETH
The most brutal of all Egyptian executions was the plague of locusts in 1300 BC. It was. Insects covered the ground, grass, trees with a carpet. And very soon not a single green leaf remained.
Locusts later became the cause of the death of many countries and peoples. For example, in 125 BC. she destroyed all crops in Numidia and Cyrenaica. After that, 800 thousand people died of hunger. And in 944 in Baghdad there were so many flying insects that they blocked the sun and ate all the greens. And again it all ended in terrible hunger and death.
But the most powerful locust outbreak occurred in 1874 in Kansas. Within a few days, all the greenery was destroyed throughout the state. After she was gone, voracious insects began to eat sheep's wool, and directly on animals, leather goods and even paint on fences. There were so many locusts that with her quantity she put out fires in which people were going to burn them. The special "vacuum cleaner" invented by farmers, which sucked insects into the box where they died, was also ineffective. I had to turn the harm in favor. People have learned to cook locusts, fry them in oil. It tasted like nuts …
Be that as it may, in that terrible year, the locusts caused $ 200 million in damage to the state. Fortunately, trillions of larvae died in the late frosts.
The swarm of locusts is so huge that because of it, trains are often canceled in some African countries, as a collision with insects threatens to disaster. Africans call locusts "the teeth of the wind" because of their ability to fly at speeds of up to 40 km / h. Sometimes the flock left Morocco in the morning, and by nightfall it was already in Portugal. Locusts do not just move through the air, they do it so noisily that, according to the testimony of the pilots, one cannot hear the engine running.
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After itself, the flock, which is a swarming mass about 30 cm thick, leaves dead bare ground. This is not surprising, because on average a swarm of locusts, consisting of 2 billion individuals, with a total weight of about 3 tons, covers an area of up to 12 square meters. km. In one day, she is able to eat 4,000 tons of green mass.
EXECUTION AMERICAN
The French astronomer Leopold Trouvelot was fond of entomology at his leisure. In 1869, he decided to develop a new species of silkworm, resistant to disease. For this purpose, he wanted to cross two types of butterflies: in fact, a silkworm and, specially brought from France, a gypsy moth. And, I must say that the unpaired is the worst enemy of forests. Caterpillars of this butterfly eat everything - from foliage to needles. But Leopold Truvelo did not think about the consequences, since he was so careless that he missed several specimens of gypsy moth moths from his laboratory. It happened in Medford, Massachusetts. Truvelo thought that in a strange climate, unpaired people simply would not survive. But he miscalculated …
Twenty years later, in 1889, the people of Medford were likely to experience what once fell to the lot of the Egyptians. First, the caterpillars destroyed all the forests in the vicinity of the city, and then took up parks and squares. The trees were bare as in late autumn. Caterpillars were everywhere in the city. They covered the walls of houses and fences, crawled into houses. They were found in food pantries, on dining tables and in beds. They swarmed on the sidewalks, people and vehicles crushed them in hundreds of thousands. Over the city there was a disgusting smell from the decaying corpses of insects. At night, the townspeople heard how silkworms "chomp", destroying the last city greenery. The caterpillars stained the linen that was drying in the street, the clothes of passers-by. And they even stopped the city clock by hiding in it.
Life in the city came to a standstill. People did nothing but shovel the caterpillars into heaps, douse them with kerosene and burn them. This fruitless struggle against silkworms, which occupied an area of about 400 square kilometers, continued for almost 10 years. And then suddenly, in 1901, all events were curtailed. As a result, the area infested with silkworms increased to 4000 sq. Km. Insects, devastating one state, moved to neighboring states. And again the war on pests began. The Americans brought almost all the natural enemies of the silkworm into the country, and this is about 100 species, but so far they still have not gotten rid of the gypsy …
RUNNED ANTS
In the spring of 1902, the Mont Pele volcano began to wake up on the island of Martinique. And all the insects living on the volcano, including ants, poured into the city of Saint-Pierre. Having lost their habitual habitat, in search of food ants pounced on sugarcane plantations, almost completely destroying them. Many farmers left their homes, frightened by the invasion of ants. And, as it seemed, it saved them. A week later, the volcano began to erupt. In this case, not only hordes of insects died, but also 28,000 townspeople.
In 2008, swarms of "rabid Rasberry ants" attacked Texas. They were named Rabid because of their chaotic and fast manner of movement, and Rusberry - in honor of Tom Rusberry of insect control, who first discovered the problems associated with them.
A characteristic feature of the Rasberia ants is their morbid passion for electrical appliances, or rather the electromagnetic field emitted by them. The ants gnaw through the wires and die. The smell of dead comrades attracts new ants. The same sad fate overtakes them. In the end, the accumulation of ant bodies causes a short circuit and equipment breakdown.
Thus, in Texas, insects disabled the equipment of city pumping stations and gas meters. But most importantly, they appeared at NASA facilities and at the nearest airport.
Raging ants, with their reddish-brown color, covered all the streets, gardens and vegetable gardens with a carpet. It felt like someone was sprinkling tons of granulated coffee.
They tried to treat them with insecticides, but it turned out that they are insensitive to most of them. Moreover: somehow they smelled the poison and bypassed it, building crossings over the poisoned areas from the bodies of dead relatives …
As a result, in June 2008, the US EPA granted temporary approval for the use of fipronil to contain rabid ants. This poison is characterized by high, and even worse - long-term toxicity, it can be absorbed by plants from soil and seeds. Therefore, it is used extremely rarely: only when the intended benefit exceeds the intended harm.
The risk was justified: this time the rabid ants retreated …
BEES ARE NOT JUST HONEY
In the middle of the last century, the Brazilian scientist entomologist Warwick Kerr developed a new species of super bees, called Africanized. These bees produced more honey than their counterparts, reproduced faster and were twice as poisonous. But at the same time, they behaved much more aggressively, protecting their hives. And anything could have enraged them: bright clothes, smell, rain and so on. One of the scientist's assistants accidentally released several individuals from a laboratory hive. Since this species is resistant to disease, and it has no natural enemies in Brazil, the "African women", interbreeding with the "aboriginal" women, began to multiply rapidly. There is less honey at the exit, and much more aggression.
In 1967, swarms of these bees pounced on homes in Rio de Janeiro Bay, killing 150 people. In total, the killer bees have more than 200 human lives and several thousand victims of their stings. Until people manage to find effective methods of dealing with them …
Galina MINNIKOVA