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Researchers at the University of Cambridge have learned why it is that locusts (yes, like in the plagues!) swarm. Typically, locusts are “shy” (their word, not mine) and solitary organisms. The swarming that we usually associate them with is a rare and unusual occurrence. In fact, it happens only in response to life-threatening droughts or other situations in which the locusts’ food supply is limited. Then, locusts gather together in the tens of millions to migrate and seek out new food sources. (In the process, they often devour our crops and vegetation.)

Locusts Choose Life

The short of it is that as they begin to hone in on increasingly limited food sources and bump up against one another (which increases serotonin production), they become more “gregarious” (yup–that is what the scientist said), and this keeps them together to migrate. How do the scientists know for sure? Well, when the researchers limited serotonin production, those locusts wouldn’t budge, no matter what the proximity of other locusts was. They stayed put.

Why Should We Care About Pest Control?

As soon as I heard this report on the radio, I felt a pang in my heart. How did locusts get so lucky? When their depression-like state gets dire and they’re facing sure death, they don’t sit in a chair staring at a wall while the people who love them desperately try to get through to them. They don’t have to be dragged into a doctor’s office so that they can get some medication. They don’t sink deeper and deeper into a black hole, isolated and alone.

NO! They are programmed to seek out their compatriots, which automatically kicks up their serotonin levels and keeps them hanging on to one another until they find salvation!

Taking a Page from the Locusts’ Book

I believe in the divine. And I find it pretty hard to swallow the idea that locusts were given preferential treatment. I don’t mind bumping up against someone I love if that is going to make that person realize that he or she needs to reconnect with me and others. And if I instinctively knew to do that for myself as soon as the dark clouds gathered above me–well, wow. I could live in a world like that.

Swarming as a Strategy

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about depression lately. Increasingly, one partner in the couples I work with is struggling with it. I see it in family and friends as well. That might explain my particular take on this interesting but mostly innocuous scientific discovery.

Do you know what I am talking about? Is there someone in your life who you’re trying to reach?

Tell us what your experience is. Let’s start our own swarm and see if we can lick this!

[Photo by ||!prliignore2||]