What does the Rocky Mountain Locust have to do with history?
Insects have always played a large role in history. Some societies worshipped insects. However, for other societies, insects were a plague. The locust is one of those insects. The ancient Egyptians, for example, associated the locust with their dieties Siris, the god of crops, and Serapia, the protector of crops. On the other hand, locusts were considered a plague in some ancient societies, especially when they ate all the crops and caused famines and starvation. This project is about a specific type of locusts that were considered a plague because they roamed in such big swarms that they ate miles of crops. Read on to find out more about this type of locust...
The Rocky Mountain Locust
Family: Acrididae | Subfamily: Melanoplinae | Genus: Melanoplinae | Species: M. spretus |
The Rocky Mountain Locust was a troublesome insect to farmers in the United States and Canada. Farmers had been fighting to keep these insects away from their crops for centuries. They were the cause of crop shortages, which in extreme plague situations can result in mass starvation. One example of this is the locust plague of 1874, which caused millions of dollars in damages during a time when survival was dependent on the success of one's crops.
Background
The Rocky Mountain Locust, Melanoplus spretus, was a grasshopper from the family Acrididae, genus Melanoplus, that went extinct in 1902. It was native to the United States but mainly bred in Wyoming and Montana. This species of locust is infamous for the locust plague of 1874 where they caused millions of dollars in damage and caused a food shortage throughout North America. It is theorized that they went extinct due to modern terraforming of their natural breeding grounds.
About the Rocky Mountain Locust
The body length to end of forewings of males was 25mm and females 28mm. Head to wing tip 30 to 36+ mm. The long wing was conspicuously spotted and extended beyond the apex of the hind femur 4.5 to 10 mm. This is the description is for the adult insect, which is the final stage of this creature's life. This insect has three stages, egg, nymph and finally adult. This species looked very similar to the modern-day grasshopper. Their eating habits are what gave these insects a bad name in the 1800s. They were known to eat just about anything insight, including each other. This species went through sedentary and migratory phases, with their migratory phases usually lasting for two years at a time and their swarm numbers reaching into the trillions.
Their typical breeding ground was high in the Rocky Mountains, hence the name. The favored breeding locations were riverbanks and sunny slopes. They were known to swarm only during certain weather conditions such as droughts and they followed westward wind currents. This explains why the locust plagues would only happen during certain years, and why they only lasted less than two years. Overall, accidental human destruction of their habitat is what drove this once common pest into extinction.
Interaction with Humans
The Rocky Mountain Locust and humans have had a long history together. Human interaction with these creatures has been dated all the back to the 1600s when the first pilgrims arrived at Plymouth, until the locust's eventual extinction in 1902. The two interacted most frequently in the 19th century, most notably with the plague of locusts in 1874-75. While this is the most famous locust event in U.S. history, it is far from the only human-locust interaction. There were many other interactions, and there is no doubt that human interaction with this species was the suspected cause of their extinction.
Though the locust plagues are not a problem in modern USA, in the 1800s, the locusts raged through farmer's crops, clothes, and tools every few years, before receding back to their breeding grounds. This pest swarmed in the trillions during the plague in 1874-75 and caused millions of dollars in damage by eating everything in their path. Humans tried to fight them anyway they could, they used fire, firearms, and sometimes even dynamite. Nothing affected the vast quantity of locusts, except when human intervention accidentally caused the extinction of the species.
The last living specimen of the Rocky Mountain locust died in 1902, and scientists discovered that the species died off because of human's terraforming their natural breeding grounds. With the lack of suitable breeding grounds, the species were unable to adapt and died off before being able to evolve. Through human technology (I.e., changing of the environment to suit mankind's needs), man has inadvertently wiped out a pest that had plagued humans for hundreds of years.
Bibliography
Bristow, David. Clouds of Grasshoppers in 1874 .
Nebraskaland Magazine. Nebraska State Government, July 12, 2022. http://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2022/07/clouds-of-grasshoppers-in-1874/.
Lockwood, Jeffrey. The Death of the Super Hopper.
High Country News – Know the West, February 3, 2003. https://www.hcn.org/issues/243/13695.
Rocky Mountain Grasshopper - Melanoplus Spretus.
Montana Field Guide. The State of Montana, May 6, 2023. https://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=IIORT01010.
The Long-Lost Locust.
Jstor Daily. Accessed May 12, 2023. https://daily.jstor.org/the-long-lost-locust/.
Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. Looking Back at the Days of the Locust.
The New York Times. The New York Times, April 23, 2002. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/science/looking-back-at-the-days-of-the-locust.html#:~:text=In%201875%20the%20species%20formed,Pennsylvania%2C%20Rhode%20Island%20and%20Vermont.
Bristow, David. Clouds of Grasshoppers in 1874 .
Nebraskaland Magazine. Nebraska State Government, July 12, 2022. http://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2022/07/clouds-of-grasshoppers-in-1874/.