Why Aren't There Locust Plagues Anymore?

Summary

Locust plagues, once a massive threat in the 19th century, have seemingly vanished from North America. Once infamous for their destructive swarms, North American locusts have been extinct since the early 1900s. The disappearance of these locusts has puzzled scientists, with theories ranging from environmental changes to human agricultural practices. The podcast from Tor's Cabinet of Curiosities delves into the history of these notorious insects, their impact, and the potential reasons for their abrupt decline.

Highlights

• Locusts once blocked out the sun and devoured fields, causing widespread famine. 🌞
• Iconic swarms numbered in the trillions and covered vast areas, yet are extinct today. 🌐
• Environmental changes and agriculture might have unintentionally wiped out the North American locusts. 🌱
• Despite their destructive nature, the disappearance of locusts poses questions about the impact of human activity. 🤔
• The curious case of the locusts teaches us about unintended consequences in environmental changes. 🧐

Key Takeaways

• Locust plagues were once a significant threat, but mysteriously disappeared by the early 20th century. 🌾
• The North American locusts, once numbering in trillions, are now extinct. 🦗
• Various theories suggest environmental changes and human activities contributed to their decline. 🌍
• The history of locusts is tied to the broader environmental impact of human expansion. 🚜
• Understanding past extinctions can help us manage our current environmental challenges. 🌿

Overview

Once upon a time, locust plagues were not just the stuff of nightmares or dramatic depictions in movies, but a harsh reality blighting the very fabric of life across North America. These creepy-crawly invaders would descend in such gigantic numbers they could make a blanket of darkness, devouring entire fields and leaving a path of desolation. They were the 'piranhas of the sky,' feared as much as any natural disaster of the time.

As the pioneers moved westward, they met wave after wave of these insect marauders, leading to tales of classic swarms that could rival any Hollywood blockbuster in sheer scale and horror. Yet, somewhat miraculously, locusts disappeared—poof!—from the mid-1900s onwards. This magical vanishing act wasn’t due to modern pesticides but rather a blend of natural and anthropogenic factors, leaving experts and curious minds scratching their heads for decades.

Delving into the vanishment of these buzzing creatures isn’t merely academic; it brings forth lessons vital for today's world too. It underscores the surprising resilience and flexibility of ecosystems, and how seemingly small actions lead to massive ripple effects. Intriguingly, while no one misses the famines these locusts caused, their story poses a cautionary tale about unintended consequences, reminding us to tread thoughtfully on this delicate Earth.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Locust Plagues The chapter titled 'Introduction to Locust Plagues' starts with a thought-provoking question about the awareness of locust plagues. It describes the phenomenon where millions or even billions of insects, resembling large grasshoppers, form swarms so massive that they obscure sunlight. These swarms devour everything in their path, including crops, wool from sheep, and even clothes from people's backs, causing widespread destruction. The introductory passage suggests a familiarity with such scenes, often depicted in stories about pioneers.
• 01:00 - 02:30: History and Biblical References This chapter draws connections between classic Western movies and biblical references, specifically focusing on the apocalyptic imagery created by locust swarms. It recalls how locusts were a significant biblical event, one of the plagues of Egypt, as described in the book of Exodus. The demand to "let my people go" precedes the threat of locusts being unleashed upon the Pharaoh's country. These images are iconic both in cinema and religious teachings.
• 02:30 - 04:00: American Pioneer Days and Locust Threat This chapter discusses the threat of locusts as noted in the Old Testament, describing how they will cover the ground, devour what remains after hailstorms, and fill houses. The locust plague is depicted as an unprecedented event in Egyptian history, unmatched since the settlement of the land, highlighting the severity and fear such events induced.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Extinction of the North American Locust The chapter examines the cultural portrayal of locust plagues, often depicted humorously or as a nightmare scenario in media, such as in 'Courage the Cowardly Dog.' It questions the personal experience of locust plagues, prompting readers to reflect on whether they or anyone they know have witnessed such natural phenomena, emphasizing the impact and rarity of such events.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Efforts to Control Locusts in 19th Century America The chapter 'Efforts to Control Locusts in 19th Century America' discusses the occurrence of locust plagues and their impact. It compares modern experiences with locust plagues to historical events in Ethiopia, Madagascar, and the Horn of Africa, highlighting how these events can trigger international news coverage and resonate with apocalypse themes, especially evident in the 2020 news cycle. The chapter sets the context by noting that most people today, particularly outside of regions like Ethiopia, likely have never witnessed such plagues firsthand.
• 09:00 - 13:00: Misconceptions about Locust Plagues The chapter titled 'Misconceptions about Locust Plagues' addresses the common belief in the United States that locust plagues are a relic of the past, akin to the conestoga wagon. The chapter corrects this perception by highlighting that while locust threats were indeed prevalent during the pioneer days in the 19th century, they are considered a thing of the past now in the US. However, during their peak, locust swarms were so dense that they could consume entire ears of corn, leaving a significant impact on the Great Plains.
• 13:00 - 16:00: Theories on Locust Behavior and Extinction In this chapter, the focus is on the swarming behavior and the destructive impact of locusts, particularly during the severe plague of 1875. Locusts were so numerous and pervasive that they disrupted daily life and infrastructure, notably in the Midwest. They devoured everything in their path, including fences, and were unfazed by efforts to deter them, such as bonfires. Their sheer mass was enough to halt trains, creating a sticky situation that mechanical power alone couldn't overcome. Described as 'the Piranhas of the air,' their behavior and ecological effect made them a formidable challenge and subject of study. The chapter also touches on meteorological observations and insights from Albert Child, a Nebraska meteorologist who witnessed the locust's overwhelming numbers firsthand.
• 16:00 - 18:30: Modern Understanding and DNA Discoveries The chapter titled 'Modern Understanding and DNA Discoveries' outlines a historical account of a massive swarm of insects that was observed over 5 days. Neighboring towns communicated about the swarm using telegraphs. The swarm, estimated to cover nearly 200,000 square miles, was larger than California and comprised approximately 12 trillion individual insects. This event represents one of the largest single concentrations of animals ever documented.
• 18:30 - 25:00: Ecological Changes and Human Impact The chapter explores the assumption that ecological disruptions such as locust swarms are still common in certain areas, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, which is presented as a region susceptible to terrifying natural disasters. It raises the notion of living in the Texas Panhandle, a place where people might typically have shelters for tornadoes and large hail, indicating the perceived normalcy of preparing for severe weather events.
• 25:00 - 31:00: Reevaluating Human Impact on Nature The chapter titled 'Reevaluating Human Impact on Nature' discusses the historical impact of locust swarms in North America. It references an overwhelming locust swarm from 1875, described as a thousand miles long and seemingly undefeatable. The locusts were likened to apex predators that challenged even other apex predators. The mention of various shelters, such as prairie fire, sandstorm, extreme temperatures, and locust shelters, highlights human adaptation to harsh environmental conditions. The overarching theme suggests a reflection on how humanity has historically had to adapt to natural phenomena, underscoring the persistent influence of nature on human society.

Why Aren't There Locust Plagues Anymore? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 here's a question have you ever heard of the concept of a locust plague Millions possibly billions of big nasty grasshopper likee bugs moving in swarms so vast they block out the sun eating everything ins sight crops out of the fields wool off live sheep clothes off people's backs leaving a path of Destruction across miles of prairie this is somewhat familiar to you right you've probably seen depictions of locust plagues descending on Pioneers in
• 00:30 - 01:00 classic Western movies like Days of Heaven or the 8S Little House on the Prairie TV series if you grew up going to Sunday school you might remember Locust swarms as a literally biblically apocalyptic event one of the plagues of Egypt that the Pharaoh was cursed with consists of a swarm of locust described in the book of Exodus this way let my people go so that they may worship if you refuse to let them go I will bring locusts into your country
• 01:00 - 01:30 tomorrow they will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen they will devour what little you have left after the hail including every tree that is growing in your Fields they will fill your houses of those of all your officials and all the Egyptians something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now that Old Testament is no joke Locust plagues a occasionally show up in popular
• 01:30 - 02:00 culture to this day usually played for Laughs as an over-the-top comically awful situation like in that classic traumatizing episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog where the locusts are set upon courage as a curse for defacing an Egyptian tomb here's another question have you ever experienced a locust plague have you ever personally been there to see the sky darken with swarming insects has anyone you know
• 02:00 - 02:30 ever witnessed a locust plague now unless you're from say Ethiopia in which case I salute you the answer is probably not right every now and then word drifts in on the international newswire of locusts swarming in some distant developing country they ripped through Madagascar in 2013 and the Horn of Africa in 2020 which fueled a lot of 2020 is a literal [ __ ] apocalypse am I right news coverage a meme that was unironically the worst thing about
• 02:30 - 03:00 2020 but here in the US if anyone ever thinks of locusts at all they're thought of as something that went the way of the conastoga wagon they were a threat during the pioneer days but in this country Locust plagues don't happen anymore and this isn't an incorrect view of the Locust situation they sure were a threat during the pioneer days in the middle of the 19th century swarms were a regular occurrence across the Great Plains sometimes getting dense enough to eat whole ears of corn cob and all even
• 03:00 - 03:30 chewing right through wooden fences the Piranhas of the air bonfires were set to keep the locusts away but they smothered the fires out with their sheer density trains were stopped by running into masses of locusts on the track creating a gluey mess that the train was no match for they numbered among the most numerous animals on the planet in 1875 the year of the worst Midwestern Locust plague yet Nebraska meteorologist Albert child witnessed a continuous
• 03:30 - 04:00 swarm of bugs passing overhead for 5 Days by telegraphing neighboring towns for reports on how they were weathering the Swarm child estimated that the Swarm covered nearly 200,000 square miles larger than California and consisted of 12 trillion individual insects this swarm is believed to have been the largest single concentration of animals ever observed if I hadn't come across
• 04:00 - 04:30 the story I'm about to tell you I would have assumed that this still happens living here where I do in the Pacific Northwest the great ples seem damn near uninhabitable locusts or no locusts so I think that locusts are still a regular occurrence in that area because it feels to me like all sorts of terrifying natural disasters happened in that area all the [ __ ] time I'd assume that if I lived in say the Texas Panhandle I'd have a tornado shelter and a baseball-sized tail shelter and a
• 04:30 - 05:00 prairie fire shelter and a sandstorm shelter and a 150° humidity shelter and a-40 degree cold shelter and a locust shelter and so would everyone else on my block but that's not the case in 1875 North American locusts formed a continuous swarm a thousand miles long they seemed undefeatable an apex predator that brought other apex predators to their knees 20 7 years
• 05:00 - 05:30 later in 1902 the last member of the species was discovered in the Canadian prairies the North American Locust has been extinct ever since the sudden and Rapid disappearance of the locusts predated modern pesticides and Industrial farming techniques and when they went extinct large parts of the Great Plains were still pretty wild what the hell happened to the North American Locust I'm your host toor Parsons this
• 05:30 - 06:00 is my co-host Jolly the durian and welcome to T's Cabinet of [Music] [Music] Curiosities the you came
• 06:00 - 06:30 take to there's no space There's No Tomorrow there [Music]
• 06:30 - 07:00 in the 1870s Locust control was the biggest issue on the minds of many in the Western United States Westward Expansion had been ongoing for a few decades and the federal government still wanted to encourage more people to settle in the west but the worsening Locust swarms were not helping their case Farmers out in the plains put together improvised machines to destroy the bugs on mass such as Hopper dozers
• 07:00 - 07:30 which were modified plows that pulled snacking locusts up from the fields and dumped them into Vats of poison carried along behind a horse they built hand pumped blower Contraptions like early vacuum cleaners sucking up the locusts by the hundreds bales of hay would be set out for the locusts to Feast on then the buzzing swarm would be detonated with explosives this did even less than the other measures but at least it was probably fun the entomologist Charles Valentine Riley possibly the biggest
• 07:30 - 08:00 Authority on America's Locust plagues created a recipe for locusts fried in butter but nobody wanted to eat the awful things State authorities gave out healthy bounties for collecting bushels of dead locusts the entomologist Norman kiddle made Bank selling the pesticide kiddles mixture a concoction of horse dung molasses and arsenic even that didn't work very well locusts Ate Everything That Grew across the mid West
• 08:00 - 08:30 they were not stopped by weather like the US Postal Service neither snow nor rain nor heat nor Gloom of night stayed these big bugs from the Swift completion of their everything which is saying a lot since bad weather actually does hold up the Postal Service which might be why contrary to popular belief that is not their official motto thousands starved in Missouri in 1875 after the Swarms ate all their crops one of the most recent significant famines in the US Go West
• 08:30 - 09:00 Young Man was no longer an attractive slogan when it became clear that the truth was more like Go West Young Man and fight for your life every few years against a trillion great big bugs desperate to find a solution the government convened the US entomological commission chaired by Locust eater Charles Valentine Riley to study the locusts over the next few years Locust plagues became less common and less intense the entomologists mostly put this down to the the typical
• 09:00 - 09:30 precipitation cycle of the Plains in times of drought the locusts would swarm and in wetter weather they'd have enough to eat and wouldn't need to form massive destructive Expeditions in search of food but Midwestern Farmers also took the entomological commission's advice to Heart switching out their late summer Harvest crops for winter wheat which matured earlier and would be harvested before the year's generation of locusts came of age giving the locusts less material to munch on this was credited
• 09:30 - 10:00 with saving a lot of farmers livelihoods but once the dry years came back the entomological commission expected that the locusts would too but you didn't but they didn't they kept declining year after year until they were gone nobody really seemed to notice that the locusts hadn't shown up in a while I have a feeling that saying it sure has been a while since the last Locust plague is a definitive way to get J
• 10:00 - 10:30 Norman kiddle of mixture Fame found two locusts in Manitoba In 1902 the Locust was once so abundant that paradoxically it wasn't studied that much nobody needed to take a specimen and preserve it for posterity there were just so many of them they couldn't possibly be threatened when kiddle found locusts In 1902 though alone and Far From Any swarm he was beginning to realize that locusts were now becoming rare little did he know these would be the last confirmed
• 10:30 - 11:00 specimens of the North American Locust ever found alive what's more the entomological commission's explanation connecting the Locust swarms to dry and wet years made total sense and to this day weather conditions are used to predict Locust swarms in East Africa with plenty of accuracy but in America the idea that locusts swarm in times of drought didn't seem to be borne out by real world data white people had been settling on the planes since the 1830s
• 11:00 - 11:30 but the Locust plagues only reached their height in the 1870s the cycle of rain and drought on the Prairies had gone around several times since the Pioneers started arriving but the Locust conditions seemed to be getting progressively worse year onye until 1875 with little regard to the weather and here's where things get really interesting when homesteaders sought the advice of native people who they assumed had been dealing with the locusts for Millennia the native people said that they were as lost as the newcomers
• 11:30 - 12:00 Locust plagues seem to not have been a regular occurrence on the plains until the 19th century some tribes believed they were a curse brought by the Invaders there were oral Traditions saying that in the distant past the people of the Plains had faced the threat of something vaguely similar but nothing like that had happened in living memory this makes the Locust situation all the weirder from this it seems like the locusts have a very longterm
• 12:00 - 12:30 cyclical nature they appear they swarm for a few decades and then they disappear how long that cycle is we don't know but presumably very long if nobody around could remember the last time the locusts swarmed to the native people of the Plains Locust swarms in what we call the 19th century felt the way Locust swarms would to Americans today an antique barely real mythological seeming threat the turmoil
• 12:30 - 13:00 of the Clash of civilizations in the 19th century on the Great Plains reshaping the landscape and the ecosystem would have been just a blip in Locust time something that was coincidentally happening as the Locust reached their final form the Apex of a hundreds of years long cycle is it possible that the North American Locust is not extinct could they come back and if they could come back where are they hiding right now now it's tempting to
• 13:00 - 13:30 say that the locusts have some absurdly long hibernation cycle you've heard of 17year cicas so now meet Thousand-Year locusts it's hardly more incredible than a species that can form a swarm the size of California made up of 12 trillion individuals but even if the locusts really do have some eldrich barely comprehensible boom and bust cycle a long hibernation probably isn't part of it see there's no real difference between a grasshopper and a locust at
• 13:30 - 14:00 least not genetically a grasshopper can change into a locust over the course of its life normally grasshoppers are solitary creatures that eat grains and grasses in small manageable amounts their bright green instead of brown don't like the company of other grasshoppers don't travel far during their lifetime and aren't very scary but if too many grasshoppers are in one place at once the smell of Their Own poop and the stimulation of the hairs on
• 14:00 - 14:30 their legs by brushing up against other grasshoppers turns them into locusts The Incredible Hulk form of the grasshopper they're bigger spikier darker colored and more omnivorous and instead of wanting to be alone they form what's practically a super organism millions of insects moving as one it's one of the most amazing metamorphic processes in the animal kingdom especially since it's not part of their regular life cycle the way metamorphis usually happens it's
• 14:30 - 15:00 triggered by outside conditions this is why Locust plague Cycles track drought Cycles so well in Africa where locusts are still a threat when there's plenty of rain and things are green grasshoppers are content to be grasshoppers when there's not enough food they're forced together and they take to the skies as locusts this is also why Locust plagues briefly made a comeback in America in the 1930s driven This Time by the behavior of a different more predictable
• 15:00 - 15:30 species of grasshopper dooster longipennis look I didn't make that name up responding to the conditions of the Dust bow perhaps the North American Locust had a more inscrutable cycle instead of becoming locusts in the dry years they became locusts According to some other natural Rhythm something that took centuries to repeat now maybe they're hiding among us as one of the common species of spur thred grass ER waiting for their time to come again
• 15:30 - 16:00 it's an interesting thing to speculate about but this somewhat romantic theory about the locusts being animals living on a time scale we can't even comprehend was disproved by DNA evidence in 2004 the theory was compelling for a long time because there weren't a lot of readily accessible specimens of North American locusts because once again they were too abundant for anyone to want to record data on them so ANM olist didn't have a source to take a DNA sample from
• 16:00 - 16:30 nor could they look at specimens of North American locusts to look for ways in which they differ from existing species of grasshopper but in 2004 researchers found specimens of North American locusts they could study in an unlikely place there's a glacier in a remote part of Yellowstone National Park called grasshopper Glacier and sure enough it has thousands of preserved
• 16:30 - 17:00 dead locusts in it which with climate change were becoming more accessible from these samples entomologists were able to disprove the cyclical hypothesis of the North American Locust because they found it sure enough the Locust was a distinct species not a phase that some ordinary grasshoppers were going through it's not a phase mom so if they were a distinct species of their own and therefore probably really are extinct what is the real story how could they
• 17:00 - 17:30 have come out of nowhere surged so much in the 1870s and then vanished well have you seen the movie District 9 no I'm not trying to claim that the North American locusts were aliens but do you remember what the aliens in District 9 were called prawns and if you're not from South Africa where District 9 was made and set that probably made sense to you the aliens look like shrimp sure that humans would
• 17:30 - 18:00 call them prawns but I don't think they were supposed to be named after shrimp I think they were supposed to be named after prawns which in South Africa means something different Park Town [Music] prawns they're hiding in the top CH they're hiding in your train hole they're going to b b hole
• 18:00 - 18:30 it's sort of like a cricket it's sort of like a lobster the it doesn't matter the African king Cricket better known as the Park Town prawn is the most annoying pest in South Africa big orange bugs not aquatic in the slightest that poop over everything eat holes in carpets and bounce several feet in the air when Disturbed they're big and fearsome enough that a main component of
• 18:30 - 19:00 their diet is snails which they eat shell and all Park toown prawns are named after Park Town a leafy well-off suburb of Johannesburg which is named after the park that it surrounds which if you think about how that naming would have happened it should be putting little cartoon question marks over your head if the bugs were named Park toown prawns that must mean Park Town predates the prawns right there was a park and therefore a city before people had a name for these nasty orange Critters
• 19:00 - 19:30 that are all over the place in Johannesburg well yeah sort of Park toown prawns are not an invasive species in South Africa they've always been there but if you ask joird residents about the prawns they'll often mention a joke conspiracy theory that everyone knows but I don't think anyone really believes that the prawns are of artificial origin April Fool's Day newspaper articles in the jerg metro area often present quote unquote evidence that Park toown prawns are the
• 19:30 - 20:00 result of genetic engineering experiments at johannesburg's University of the vidvat Shand in the' 60s the reason the joke makes sense is that prawns weren't common in the jerg area until then up to that point they were only known as African king crickets and only entomologists were familiar with them in the 1960s though they descended on Johannesburg Suburbia in droves they've been a pest ever since why because of a change in the local
• 20:00 - 20:30 ecosystem before the Advent of modern Suburbia with Street trees and neatly watered Lawns the Johannesburg area was a hot high elevation grassland not particularly hospitable to king crickets or the slimy creatures they ate humans created the circumstances in which the prawns could Thrive so maybe the story of the North American locusts is something similar first the invasion of white settlers created some change in the ecosystem that created drought-like
• 20:30 - 21:00 conditions for the Grasshoppers causing them to become locusts then somehow after swarming for decades they couldn't sustain their massive population anymore and died out the Locust situation has been connected to the declining bison populations another Grazer of the Prairies some estimates say that when Columbus arrived North America had more bison than people today there are about 500,000 10% of which are on ranches
• 21:00 - 21:30 owned by Ted Turner and even that was a huge improvement over the number back at the beginning of the 20th century when it was believed only 541 remained in the wild we've all seen this haunting photo of a man standing on a pile of Bison skulls three stories high taken outside a Detroit fertilizer Factory in 1892 the pile in the picture probably contained several times more bison skulls than there were living bison in the world at the time time it was taken we almost lost bison to the
• 21:30 - 22:00 same mentality that kept researchers from saving specimens of the North American Locust there are so many of them the species can't possibly be at risk now what if removing bison caused the Grasshoppers to be deprived of some conditions they relied on maybe the Bison did something in particular to the grass of the Tall Grass prairies and without them the Grasshoppers couldn't graze forcing them to swarm and then what regular agriculture reshaped
• 22:00 - 22:30 the PLS so much the locusts couldn't survive it's possible but given the stories of locusts chewing through fence posts and gobbling the wool off sheep I'd say it's unlikely that the North American Locust had a particularly narrow diet some have speculated that alala yeah alala was the culprit one of the few things the rather useless us entomological commission discovered I mean maybe I should stop being so hard on them after all as soon as they were created there were no more Locust
• 22:30 - 23:00 plagues right anyway the entomological commission discovered that alala he was one of the few things that locusts couldn't eat not that they didn't eat it of course like a toddler eating lipstick the locusts didn't know they couldn't eat it and devoured fields of alfalfa just like they devoured everything else but eating alala made them lethargic and surprisingly unlikely to reproduce but I think the locusts were so well adapted to eating everything in sight that it
• 23:00 - 23:30 would take planting all the arable land in the United States with Alfalfa to kill them off that way now that's a premise for a horror movie The Al alpocalypse the alal apocalypse 2o revenge of the Locust God oops all alphalpha children of the alphalpha wait it's all Alfalfa always has been but Wyoming entomologist Jeffrey Lockwood thinks he has the answer to The Disappearance of the locusts and it's generally accepted the most plausible solution today
• 23:30 - 24:00 there's no bison or greenish Patty of Alfalfa in sight in his theory instead Lockwood made an analogy to the monarch butterfly the monarch butterfly is both endangered and abundant when they migrate in the fall you can see them all over the place all across the us but their destination is a small area of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Central Mexico though large in numbers it would not be hard to wipe them out during the butterflies overwintering stage Lockwood
• 24:00 - 24:30 suspects this is what happened to the locusts they would return to river valleys in Wyoming and Montana in the winter to breed and lay eggs but once Pioneers discovered that the riverbank land was fertile they built homesteads and farms on it plowing up the locusts eggs and destroying them at their vulnerable stage Lockwood believe that there could still be North American locusts in grasshopper form in nowhere near big enough concentrations to tip them into the Locust stage hiding out in
• 24:30 - 25:00 some untouched valleys he hasn't found any an interesting point of contention with this theory is that it posits the Locust swarms as a regular occurrence a natural phenomenon in the Bug's Life Cycle it's not like the locusts in Africa which swarm only when they don't have enough food Lockwood says that layers and layers of Frozen locusts in Rocky Mountain glaciers suggest that Locust swarms must have been happing constantly for centes but that doesn't square with the
• 25:00 - 25:30 indigenous people's oral Traditions which held that Locust swarms were a new and uncommon phenomenon known only from the distant past there is however a situation in which both groups are correct which requires adding another piece of the puzzle that hasn't come up yet The Disappearance of the North American Locust didn't start in the 1870s in other places it had begun much earlier than that before the United States was born there were locusts in the 13 colonies out there far from The
• 25:30 - 26:00 Tall Grass Prairie swarms of North American locusts ravaged farms in Maine from 1743 to 1756 and Vermont from 1797 to 1798 I could find no other records of locust plagues affecting New England or anywhere east of about Indiana after that and Pioneer settlers on the plains spoke of locusts as a new threat that they didn't know how to deal with showing how quick people are to forget a
• 26:00 - 26:30 risk that seems to have gone away Locust plagues on the East Coast had occurred in living memory at that point but by the time the westward expansion began they weren't happening anymore Lockwood's hypothesis on the locusts is compelling and I think he's right and I think the cyclical theory is right and I think even the people blaming bison and Alfalfa have something to them although I can't be sure exactly what part of their hypothesis is right I think we have a situation like the Blind Men and the Elephant in which each person is accurately describing the part of the
• 26:30 - 27:00 elephant that they're touching but together their reports seem to conflict I think that just like Lockwood believes the locusts swarmed every year and returned to their breeding grounds in the Rockies every year but where they swarmed was subject to some gradual decades or maybe centuries long variation who knows what controlled that cycle but it was a cycle in the 18th century they would devour the East Coast maybe before that they would Devour the
• 27:00 - 27:30 plains at the end of a good season's devouring they would head home to the Rockies just as Lockwood postulated but as agriculture began to cover New England something about that drove the locusts away it could have been Alfalfa it could have been a lack of Bison because there were bison all the way to the Atlantic when the pilgrims first arrived it could have been something else the settlers brought that nobody has even guessed at either way as
• 27:30 - 28:00 successful as the locusts were at decimating farms they preferred decimating a less cultivated environment and retreated to the Great Plains where they hadn't swarmed in living memory by the 19th century then the white man followed them coming into conflict over the second half of the century until homesteads began reaching the East slope of the Rockies wrecking the ideal conditions that the locusts needed to spawn at long last after all the plowing and F vacuuming and dynamiting and Al faling and mixtur and sautéing that did
• 28:00 - 28:30 nothing the Pioneers had seized the problem of locust plagues by its roots completely by accident back in the Radio Days of torus cabinet I planned this as an Earth Day episode and it's environmentally themed I guess but it carries a kind of odd environmental message if I were to do an episode on the extinction of the passenger pigeon or the near Extinction and successful saving of the American Bison which are simil similar but better known stories of a once incredibly numerous species
• 28:30 - 29:00 reduced to next to nothing over just a few decades the message would be clearer Extinction is bad but the North American Locust which managed to inadvertently be the subject of the most successful pest control program in history adds an odd question mark to that statement Extinction is bad I mean do we want the Locust back does anyone want the Locust back to this day Locust still cause famines in parts of the world and while
• 29:00 - 29:30 the US doesn't have a lot of subsistence Farmers anymore people would still go hungry worldwide if we had something like the swarm of 1875 today because of how much of the world's grain comes from the midwestern us and what's more if you believe the cyclical theory of the Locust Behavior which has to have some truth to it given the native oral Traditions then the pre-colombian planes ecosystem got along just fine without the locusts ecosystems are often depicted as fine-tuned Rube Goldberg
• 29:30 - 30:00 machines where if you take one piece out everything stops working and that's not wrong my favorite example of this is how reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone ended up protecting salmon spawning grounds because the Wolves ate deer keeping the deer population down which meant the deer weren't grazing by the sides of rivers anymore which meant tall grasses could grow along rivers slowing the flow of the rivers and making them Meander more which became the ideal conditions for salmon to spawn but as all inspiring as that example is e
• 30:00 - 30:30 ecosystems are resilient too plenty of organisms play a smaller role in the ecosystem than you might think when I was getting my International baloria diploma I wrote my extended essay on eliminating mosquitoes by using Gan Drive technology I expected that my conclusion would end up being that this wouldn't work because bats and spiders eat mosquitoes and reducing mosquitoes would have huge KnockOn effect for the ecosystem like the wolves in Yellowstone
• 30:30 - 31:00 but it turned out that all the journal articles I could find suggested that isn't a major concern if we killed all mosquitoes the world might be a better place it's worth noting that the US Endangered Species Act and plenty of laws inspired by it in other countries specifically exempts animals considered pests from being protected it's fashionable in our pessimistic age to say that are a violent and destructive species I don't think so we're
• 31:00 - 31:30 incredibly powerful which allows us to commit violence and destruction on a scale no other animal can but we can also help nature in ways no other animal can any other species with access to our intelligence and our technology would do what we've done to the environment that we can kill off the Bison is not uniquely human that we can recognize killing off the Bison was bad and work to bring them back is uniquely human that's the message that should be taken
• 31:30 - 32:00 away from the extinction of the North American Locust we're not evil but we are clumsy simply by virtue of our massive power we can't have known that plowing a particular Valley in Montana in the 1870s would lead to the destruction of one of the world's most numerous species and we're lucky that that blunder only led to the end of such an awful species too one that unlike Humanity you kind of can say was destructive by Nature there are a lot of situations like the North American
• 32:00 - 32:30 Locust out there where it wasn't greed that led to a species Extinction but simply the massive power we wield without thinking about how to handle it carefully [Music]
• 32:30 - 33:00 you believe something right but you do something wrong the L question will break your bones what puts you on your knees you pain the WS in red the color of your heart but the man
• 33:00 - 33:30 and gray will get you now you've got to hide or take the [Music] place to