The Great Locust Mystery

"Insects can´t go extinct". That´s where you´re wrong, kiddo. I actually never heard of the Rocky Mountain locust before. Can anyone comfirm this, please?

The Great Locust Mystery

Rocky Mountain locust

Locust Plague of 1874

Verily food

 

Credit: Holger Krisp

"Geezus, give me some slack here, I´m just hungry after spending 20 years underground as a larvae or whatever, but suddenly everyone thinks I´m the harbinger of the apocalypse or something. I never met that guy Elder John or whatever you call him." 

"Besides, it´s not my fault that you grow so much food at enormous agricultural fields, of course me and my 10 million buddies will indulge ourselves. Before you started growing crops, *we* were *your* food, but it seems the tables have turned (pun intended). Still, don´t point your fingers at me, file your complaints with the UN Food Departement or something."

"But sure, that global warming thing will probably delay my second coming with 2000 years or something. So you can have your overheated tobacco plants all to yourselves. And no chocolate-dipped grasshoppers for breakfast!" 

The fallen cicadas

 

Our favorite long-term troll Anointed Ashley doesn´t seem particularly worried about the Apocalypse starting about two weeks from now. 

Oh, and cicadas have a very long and peculiar life cycle (which is why you don´t see them for a long time). There is nothing strange about the cicada in Ashley´s back yard, and they are not closely related to locusts...

In another clip, she claims that the Nephilim will appear in October, perhaps next year, so something tells me she is already preparing to continue trolling beyond the August Apocalypse!

This is your god, panteista

 

Credit: Necrophorus

Credit: Necrophorus

Thank god for the Axial Age. Thank god for Orpheus, who on his golden tablets revealed the secrets of our real origins and the path to our salvation!

If you are a pantheist, animist or animatist, this is your god:

>>>In Spinochordodes tellinii and Paragordius tricuspidatus, which have grasshoppers and crickets as their hosts, the infection acts on the infected host's brain. This causes the host insect to seek water and drown itself, thus returning the nematomorph to water. 

>>>P. tricuspidatus is also remarkably able to survive the predation of their host, being able to wiggle out of the predator that has eaten the host. The nematomorpha parasite affects host Hierodula patellifera´s light-interpreting organs so the host is attracted to horizontally polarized light. Thus the host goes into water and the parasite's lifecycle completes.

Kneel and worship the horsehair worms!  

Crickets

I previously posted an ironic mock review of this book. Now I´m ready to review it for real!

The book´s title is "Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States" by John L Capinera, Ralph D Scott and Thomas J Walker. It was published in 2004. It really is a field guide to Caelifera and Ensifera (and hence Orthoptera), describing about one third of the species found in the United States (or perhaps North America minus Mexico - the book isn´t entirely clear on this point). 

After a detailed general introduction to orthopterans, the reader can immerse himself in species presentations, which include drawings of cerci, supra-analplates and furculae. There are also diagrams of the "song" of some orthopterans. Color plates showing most of the described species form a separate section in the middle of the volume. 

I have to say that orthopterans have extremely long and colorless vernacular names. How about glassy-winged toothpick grasshopper, leather-colored bird grasshopper, and common short-winged katydid. Let me guess, it´s common, short-winged and indeed a katydid? But OK, I did find some names that were entertaining: mischievous bird grashopper, Mormon cricket, differential grasshopper, ponderous spurt-throated grasshopper and handsome Florida grashopper. LOL! 

The Mormon cricket is the critter from the well known "Miracle of the Gulls", but this piece of ethnographic lore is not mentioned by the authors. 

I readily admit that I have no idea whether this field guide is good or bad, not being particularly interested in grasshoppers, katydids or crickets (not even Mormon ones), and at the first sight of a gryllacridoid I would probably start running in the other direction! But that´s me. 

If you are some kind of super-nerd, or perhaps a gull, this might come in handy on a shiny summer day somewhere in the Sierras... 

Let them eat roasted locusts

The recent invasion of desert locusts in East Africa was hardly caused by climate change, since locusts have threatened Africa since time immemorial. Remember the seven plagues of Egypt? 

And even if it was, so what? The airplanes used to spray the locusts with pesticides are dependent on fossil fuels. And the pesticides are hardly organic.

So the only way to have modern agriculture in Africa is to go full brownlash. Otherwise, most Africans would die of starvation. And Europeans would have no more hot chocolate. Or whatever it is we´re importing from down there. 

And no, I´m not "denying climate change" or anything like that. I´m just the grumpy old guy in the back of the room reminding you all what we are *really* up against.

Jehovah, come back, all is forgiven.

Muslim William Paley

“The Tradition of Mufaddal” is a Shia Muslim text attributed to the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq (8th century). In its present form, the text is taken from a 17th century compilation, the vast “Bihar al-Anwar”, edited by Allama Majlisi. I'm not familiar with its exact manuscript history. For instance, one would like to know whether the text really is from the 8th century, or whether it's early modern and retrospectively attributed to Al-Sadiq, who is regarded as one of the most important Shia scholars. Perhaps an expert on the history of science can have some fun with this material…

The text is a polemic against “atheists” and “Manicheans”, the former denying the existence of a Creator altogether, the latter claiming that the material universe cannot be the work of the true god, since it's imperfect and evil. Al-Sadiq's response is a sustained appeal to the argument from design. The closest Western equivalent would be William Paley. “Tawheed al Mufaddal” is essentially a rather long-winding collection of perceived examples of design in nature, the animal world, and the constitution of man. Some things (almost) never change: the peacock is mentioned, although the Imam sees it as an example of perfect artistic design, while Phillip Johnson saw it as a creation of a whimsical god. Much of the biological knowledge in “Tawheed al Mufaddal” is out of date, such as the claim that dolphins kill and eat birds, using dead fish as bait! Since the Shia Imams are supposed to be infallible, this is surely a problem if you are a devout follower of this current. The translation is awkward, since some of the factoids make no sense even on their own (surely it’s an eagle, not a “cloud”, that attacks the pythons?).

Most of the examples mentioned in this little book can be readily explained by modern science through genetics or, ahem, Darwin's theory of evolution. However, the ancient atheists refuted by Al-Sadiq really were “intellectually unfulfilled” (to adapt a phrase from Richard Dawkins), since they seem to have regarded the ordered patterns of the cosmos as the result of pure chance or spontaneous generation. The Imam has little problem pointing out that purposeful organs surely cannot be the result of a chance assemblage of disparate elements. Al-Sadiq sounds less convincing when arguing against the “Manicheans”. What about natural disasters, epidemics or death? Here, the Muslim scholar is forced to resort to the rather silly theological argument (turned into a “philosophical” one by Leibniz) that we really do live in the best of all possible worlds, that God wants to simultaneously punish the wicked and chastise the good through calamities, that evil is a necessary character-builder, etc.

Yeah, sure. That's why everyone wants to go to Heaven and stay there forever, right? With those virgins, to boot!

Al-Sadiq also says that God created locusts to show humans who's *really* in charge. Try and stop my creations! This argument, at least to me, sounds psychologically more convincing since (obviously) the universe wasn't simply “made for man”. Overall, however, the author veers so much towards the design argument that he misses the fact that the world looks *both* designed and chaotic, both good and evil, and sometimes even designed for evil (the Manicheans make the opposite mistake, emphasizing the evil or chaos over the good or designed).

Overall, I must say that I consider the tradition of the Muslim Paley to be rather unconvincing and bad, and I will therefore only give it two stars.

The allied invasion of Cornwall

This is probably *the* book on British and Irish orthopteroid insects: Orthoptera, Dictyoptera, Dermaptera and Phasmida. In plain English: Grasshoppers, crickets, cockroaches, earwigs and stick-insects!

An extensive 65-page introduction covers life history, morphology, courtship, predators and parasites, collection, rearing and culturing, etc. There's even a section on how to record orthopteran sounds! The appendices are equally interesting, including lists of outstanding sites. The New Forest and the Dorset Heathlands leads the way with 24 species, but if you're ever stuck on the island of Jersey, don't worry, 19 species to find!

The main part of the book is, of course, the species presentations, which are extensive: Description, life history and behaviour, song, habitat, distribution and status (plus range maps). Colour plates are at the back of book.

I was particularly fascinated by the stick-insects. It turns out that all of the species found in Britain are "aliens" from New Zealand or India. The authors claim that somebody deliberately bred and implanted the Unarmed Stick-Insect in Western Cornwall back in 1982. The perpetrators name isn't given.

"Grashoppers and Allied Insects" deserve five stars.

This book also has a companion, "A sound guide to the Grashoppers and Allied Insects of Great Britain and Ireland" ISBN 0946589224. It comes with commentary by David Ragge, the grand old man of British orthopteran research.

Why wasn´t this included in the Venona papers?

This Über-book á la reference has the positively scary title “Locusts and Grasshoppers of the USSR and Adjacent Countries”, giving the work (published in 1951/1963) an ominous Cold War feel. Think Berlin Crisis, Communist expansionism, fear of reds under your bed…and then think of locust swarms. Scared yet? LOL. The book was translated by “Israel program for scientific translations”, endowed by the U.S. National Science Foundation! OK, let me guess. Senator McCarthy missed a couple of them reds? The book covers large swaths of Eurasia, not just the USSR and the evil Eastern Bloc, but it has few plates/illustrations and consists mostly of in house text. A typical reference work, best kept in a university library at safe distance from you (and your freedom-loving Baptist congregation).

These creatures have been SET ASIDE

A fake review of "A Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katytids and Crickets of the United States", posted at Amazon in 2009. As usual, the bug-collectors were not amused - 15 non-helpfuls (at least). 

These creatures were used by our Lord to punish the heathens of Egypt. They have been SET ASIDE.

I ADVISE ALL ROSY-CHEEKED TEENAGERS TO STAY AWAY FROM THIS SUBJECT!!!

Great fun, if you take it as parody

One of the cable channels here in Sweden just showed this awful movie, at 2:40 AM. It's 4:30 AM as I'm writing this. Insomnia, anyone?

I didn't expect much of a movie titled "Locusts: the 8th plague" , but I must admit that the movie was even worse than my low expectations.

Unless, of course, you take it as a parody...

A swarm of dangerous, deadly, meat-eating locusts escape from a research laboratory of questionable reputation. They attack and mutilate cows. Then, they turn on farmers. Even later, they attack an amusement park. Naturally, the hungry insects also consume a doomsday preacher who quotes the locust verse from the Book of Revelation! Various special units from Washington are called in, but it turns out that the locusts (who are nicely coloured in red, by the way) are drawn towards their napalm-like pesticide, rather than killed by it.

Only one man can save the world (or is it southern Idaho): the main character of this second-rate horror show turns out to be a vegan freak who only eats organic foods. This makes him immune to the locusts. He promptly sprays the swarm with an all-organic pesticide called All Organic, and presto, the Biblical plague is thwarted in the bud. Pity nobody told Ramses II!

BUT SOME OF THE LOCUSTS ARE STILL OUT THERE...

"Locusts: the 8th plague" has all ingredients that make a horror movie really, really bad. For starters, you can actually see that the locusts are either animated, or made of plastic (red plastic). The fire spewed by one of the special units is also obviously bogus. The locusts kill and eat people so fast, that you hardly see it happening. Many of the actors are worthless, the crook naturally gets eaten by his own invention, and the usual conflicts between the silly officer and the smart scientist are *so* boring. Nor is there any hot love between the hero and his girlfriend (another smart scientist). At least the roaches at the beginning of the movie look authentic, but they are quickly consumed by the damn locusts!

I hope this movie was made as a joke. If you take it with a very large grain of salt, it's actually quite funny. It's what Swedes call "a turkey movie": a movie that's so bad, that it actually gets good!

But they did miss something! All second-rate movies let some third-rate rock band sing an end credit song. This movie had none?!

I mean, I'm sure David Lee Roth or Dee Snider would have recorded a locust song, in case anyone asked them too!

And now, I'm off to bed...