🦗 In 1875, a single swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts covered 198,000 square miles - bigger than California - with an estimated 12.5 trillion insects. It was the largest concentration of animals ever recorded.

Within 30 years, the species was completely extinct. Not hunted. Not poisoned. Farmers just plowed over its breeding grounds in Rocky Mountain river valleys without realizing that was the whole species' reproductive core.

The locust ate crops, clothing, wooden tool handles, even wool off living sheep. Then it simply vanished - the only major agricultural pest in history to go extinct on its own.

Same era, same lesson: the passenger pigeon, once billions strong, collapsed to a single bird named Martha who died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Both proved that sheer numbers don't guarantee survival when critical habitat is hidden.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mo… | pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0222/report.…

#science #nature #history #extinction

species of locust

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