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Ariel Schalit / AP
Locusts land on a sand dune in Negev Desert, southern Israel, near the border with Egypt, March 5. A swarm of locusts crossed into Israel from neighboring Egypt Monday, raising fears that Israel could be hit with a biblical plague ahead of the Passover holiday. Israel sent out planes to spray pesticides over agricultural fields to prevent damage by the small swarm of about 2,000 locusts, said Dafna Yurista, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Ministry. The ministry also set up an emergency hotline and asked Israelis to be vigilant in reporting locust sightings.
Scientists can learn a lot about the locusts swarming over Egypt and Israel just by looking at the pictures. Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, is based hundreds of miles away in Rome — but he can tell that these particular bugs may be on their last legs.
"The few good pics I have seen of the locusts show that they are a brick red rather than pinkish," Cressman told NBC News in an email. "Both colors indicate they are immature adults, but the dark color suggests they are old and tired rather than young and hungry. Hence, the infestations arriving in northeast Egypt and Israel will probably come to nothing." That's the good news. The bad news is that other locust swarms could pose a more serious threat to the region's agriculture later this year. To get the details, check out the full story in Cosmic Log.
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters
A Palestinian farmer displays locusts at a farm in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, March 5. Palestinian officials said locusts had not hit Gaza in several decades and numbers of locusts that reached Gaza on Tuesday were small but the Agriculture Ministry said they have taken all necessary steps to fight it if larger numbers hit the Gaza Strip.
Amir Cohen / Reuters
A swarm of locusts fly near Kmehin in Israel's Negev desert.
Ariel Schalit / AP
A locust on a sand dune in Negev Desert, southern Israel.
Experts estimate that a swarm of 30 million locusts in Egypt will cause severe crop damage. The correlation to the plague of locusts in the Bible has the Internet buzzing.
More about locusts:
- Locusts hit Egypt and Israel before Passover
- Gaddafi's fall leads to desert locusts' rise
- Locusts illustrate the science of swarming
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
I love how they report "raising fears that Israel could be hit with a biblical plague" like they're just forecasting some bad weather.
"Forecast for tonight, death of firstborn sons and rivers filled with blood. Now over to Chet for sports..."
Excellent fishing bait.
Age of Earth: 4.5 billion years. Age of religion: ~ 2000 years. Age of intelligence: Zero
Mankind continues to play the part of dumb party beasts who can't determine reality from mythology and has to attach 'faith' onto anything even remotely related to biblical fantasies.
Religion is older than 2000 years.
Protein. An all-you-can-eat buffet. People have eaten locusts for many thousands of years. Bon appetit.
Actually more2lose-the event of the plagues in the Bible was examined by an atheist-Immanuel Velikovsky who wrote the book "Worlds in Collisions" he wrote from a scientist point of view and came to the conclusion that all the plagues referred to in the bible could have only occurred and in the order they occurred. In fact it is stated that he even became a Christian due to his studies. Now, some others in his field went on a slanderous basklash against him. He presented this without a God figure. So I guess you are the one with zero intelligence. I love it when a fool makes a fool of himself! Now go sit in your corner!
Immanuel Velikovsky was a joke. He looked for concordances in ancient myths, then tried to postulate what could have caused them. There was no evidence that any of these things occurred, and most of what he presented would actually violate the laws of physics. Nothing slanderous with the backlash at all - he simply was wrong. He was a psychiatrist, not a physicist. Last time I checked, being a psychiatrist does not make one a scients expert in astronomy or physics.
Just because he was an ex-atheist turned Christian does not make his arguments any more or less valid. There atheistic fools just as there are religious ones.
Wouldn't you just hate to be driving down the freeway when that swarm passed through?
Uh oh Jesus is coming look busy!
..... it's a bunch of grasshoppers people .... what's the big goddamn deal?!?!?!?!
Get more chickens, they'll love them.
Times to get your spiritual house in order. I pray that Faith and Salvation are never a question in your lives, only a statement of "Yes I am". You will never know the time or place, only that's it's gonna happen and you need to be ready.