Nota:

• Ada lebih 17,000 jenis belalang di dunia!
• Kaki belakang berurat dan digunakan untuk melompat.
• Ada dua kumpulan: Long-horned & short horned, ditentukan oleh panjang antenna.
• Ada lima mata. 2 mata besar ada di sisi kepala. 2 lagi pada hujung antenna and yang akhir ada di antara antena.
• Betina lebih besar. Ada hujung tajam di abdomen, membantu bertelur. Selepas bertelur, mereka hanya pergi meninggalkan, tak perlu jaga. Melalui proses metamorphosis.
• Makan pelbagai tumbuhan dan ada yang makan rumput sahaja.
• Pemangsa termasuklah, burung, cicak, labah-labah, dan rodents.
• Ada sesetengah belalang keluarkan bunyi dengan rubbing their wings together.
• Pernah dengar tak? Kalau pernah, tulah belalang jantan!

فَأَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلطُّوفَانَ وَٱلْجَرَادَ وَٱلْقُمَّلَ وَٱلضَّفَادِعَ وَٱلدَّمَ ءَايَٰتٍ مُّفَصَّلَٰتٍ فَٱسْتَكْبَرُوا۟ وَكَانُوا۟ قَوْمًا مُّجْرِمِينَ

(Allah berfirman): Kami pun menghantarkan kepada mereka taufan, dan belalang, dan kutu, dan katak, dan darah, sebagai tanda-tanda dan bukti yang jelas nyata, maka mereka juga tetap berlaku sombong takbur dan menjadi kaum yang menderhaka.

From National Geographic

A plague of locusts is a devastating natural disaster. These infestations have been feared and revered throughout history. Unfortunately, they still wreak havoc today.

Locusts are related to grasshoppers and the two insects look similar. However, locust behavior can be something else entirely. Locusts are sometimes solitary insects with lifestyles much like grasshoppers. But locusts have another behavioral phase called the gregarious phase. When environmental conditions produce many green plants and promote breeding, locusts can congregate into thick, mobile, ravenous swarms.

Locust swarms devastate crops and cause major agricultural damage and attendant human misery—famine and starvation. They occur in many parts of the world, but today locusts are most destructive in sustenance farming regions of Africa.

The desert locust is notorious. Found in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, they inhabit some 60 countries and can cover one-fifth of Earth’s land surface. Desert locust plagues may threaten the economic livelihood of one-tenth of the world’s humans.

A desert locust swarm can be 460 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) in size and pack between 40 and 80 million locusts into less than half a square mile (one square kilometer).

Each locust can eat its weight in plants each day, so a swarm of such size would eat 423 million pounds (192 million kilograms) of plants every day.

Like the individual animals within them, locust swarms are typically in motion and can cover vast distances. In 1954, a swarm flew from northwest Africa to Great Britain. In 1988, another made the lengthy trek from West Africa to the Caribbean.

Bacaan sendiri:
Like Locusts
Locusts moving in swarms