Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: nudephil on 26/06/2020 18:43:13
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We had an extended question in from listener Paul. I've posted it here because of the environmental context:
Could vacuum cleaners be designed that would suck in locusts and then they get fed through a grinder which grinds them into sand sized particles and then be used for making porridge?
Alternatively can we find a frequency or a strobe light which upsets the breeding of the locusts?
When locusts come across a bush do they all start eating top to bottom or bottom to top? Are there differences in male and female eating patterns?
Any ideas?
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I'm particularly interested in developing the "vacuum cleaner" idea.
There's little mileage in catching locusts in flight - expensive and dangerous - but harvesting them on the ground is entirely feasible. They do hang on to their food, so a vacuum cleaner might not do the business. The trick is to use something like a combine harvester, since any crop they land on will be ruined anyway, so you might as well chop up the residual green stuff along with the insects.
I had considered separating the fat and muscle content to make surimi for human consumption, but it would be a lot simpler in the first instance to feed the chopped mash to pigs and chickens.
A PM from any entomologists or tropical agronomists would be welcome. Let's get this show on the road.
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The locusts ate not only the grass and valuable crops, but also leather, wood, sheep's wool, and—in extreme cases—even clothes off peoples' backs. As the swarms worsened, farmers attempted to control them using gunpowder, fires (sometimes dug in trenches to burn as many of the locusts as possible), smearing them with "hopperdozers", a type of plow device pulled behind horses that had a shield that knocked jumping locusts into a pan of liquid poison or fuel, even sucking them into vacuum cleaner–like contraptions, but all of these were ultimately ineffective in stopping the hordes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_locust
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No point using a bag cleaner of course, so I propose that a large cyclone device be designed, using eg oil-drums and fitted at the bottom with a fan powered by a small diesel engine. This would have a large inlet and be cheap enough for every farm to have one fitted to a trailer so as to be maneuverable into position beneath a swarm.
The bugs would be sucked into it in large numbers, probably coating the inside gradually with a layer of their carcasses. The majority would be deposited in a hopper (sorry) enabling it to be converted conveniently to animal food or fertiliser.