Have you ever heard about a duck army before? Well, listen to this. The Chinese government has prepared a 100,000-strong army of ducks ready to go to war and is waiting on standby at China’s northwest border.
"Duck troops" gather at the border to face locust swarms pic.twitter.com/1J4r3dmmJk
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) February 19, 2020
Apparently, Pakistan is experiencing its worst infestation of locust swarms in 20 years and they are eating all the crops. However, China is its neighboring country and has decided to help by amassing an army of ducks ready to combat the locust. And if China doesn’t help with the locust problem in Pakistan then the locust are expected to fly across the border into China and do the same thing to China’s crop fields.
The ducks are being referred to as a biological weapon because one duck can eat up to 200 locusts per day. Marching 100,000 ducks into a locust infested area means about 20 million locusts can be eaten each day, putting up a heavy defense against Pakistan’s valuable crop fields. The Chinese government says that ducks are more effective than putting pesticides on the crops.
The insects number in the billions and have already laid waste to thousands of acres of farmland in east Africa and many parts of Pakistan. However, they expect the wave to attempt to overtake Pakistan’s entire crop fields so they have the ducks ready to do what they were born to do, eat insects.
This isn’t the first time China has used ducks to combat a locust problem. In 2000, China sent 30,000 ducks from the Zhejiang province to Xinjiang to do battle against locusts, and it worked. They feel as of yet, this is the best way to combat the locust invasion.