How large can swarms of African desert locusts become?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania: herd of gnu (wildebeests) — Animal social behavior Herd of gnu (wildebeests) in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Swarms of the African desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) are among the largest migratory aggregations in the animal kingdom. These massive swarms can cover areas as large as 200 square kilometers (approximately 80 square miles) and may contain upward of 10 billion individuals moving cohesively in search of food.1

In some instances, these swarms have been estimated to reach even greater sizes; for example, a flight across the Red Sea in 1889 was estimated to span about 5,000 square kilometers (2,000 square miles). These insects transition from a solitary phase to a gregarious, migratory phase in response to environmental fluctuations, allowing them to form these destructive, high-density groups.23