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Giant Swarm of Mormon Crickets | National Geographic


in Northwest Colorado hungry bands of
Mormon crickets are on the move but so
too is the USDA’s crack team of cricket
catchers they are Greg sword a research
ecologist who spent over a decade
studying these insects Laura senior a
botanist by trade recruited as a bug
technician for this mission and Patrick
Lorch a biologist with a knack for
attracting crickets these experts are
out here trying to get up close and
personal with one of the worst scourge
ah’s in the West the Mormon cricket has
become notorious for its destructive
invasions with this many jumping around
it’s not a job for the faint of heart
they sneak up on you too like they might
crawl up your pant leg and you don’t
feel it until they get all the way up to
your neck and then they’re they’re
really big juicy insects so you kind of
have to fight the urge to slap them or
you’ll get a whole bunch of juicy guts
all over your neck you got to watch out
for that miles of highway and millions
of acres and a half dozen states have
been blanketed by thick bands of big
black insects although they are known as
crickets these insects are actually
katydids not true crickets they don’t
fly that can hop and crawl as much as a
mile in a day eating anything and
everything it’s pretty intense and you I
even if you like insects you would not
want to sit down in the middle of that
now Laura Greg and Patrick are trying to
find a way to stay a step ahead of the
crickets they want to discover secrets
about their behavior so they are now
bugging the bugs they’re gluing tiny
radio transmitters on to the backs of a
few lucky candidates then they follow
the crickets across Colorado’s rugged
rangeland oh I see it it’s right in this
bush she is good job the crickets that
have been tagged are tracked and then
recaptured their way to see how well
they’re doing and then sent on their way
the idea Greg says is to get a fix on
where bands of crickets move how fast
why once we’ve done that we can develop
models mathematical models that we can
use to then predict for other bands in
other parts of the western US you know
potentially our ultimate goal is to help
people and that’s what we all like to do
historically Mormon cricket infestations
are bad for about three years in every
decade greatsword certainly isn’t
complaining ronger up here I like it
quite a bit for me it’s hard to imagine
that I actually have a job where I get
to work outside and chase insects as
they run around in sagebrush it’s I love
it
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