Subduing the killer

 
Published: Thursday 29 February 1996

A team of British scientists claim to have found a solution to the locust menace- A solitary locust is inactive, while a gregarious one in the company of thousands of others can mean mass destruction.

Stephen Simpson and his colleagues at Oxford University discovered that the foam on which locust eggs are laid contained a chemical which determined whether or not the locust emerging from the egg will have gregarious or solitary tendencies. By using this chemical present in the foam, locusts can be transformed from being ravenous beasts to harmless insects.

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