1) This locust was 1.5 inches in length and usually solitary. 2) Its Latin name, Caloptenus spretus, means 'despised'. 3) When crowded together, they release chemicals that cause them to undergo Incredible Hulk-like changes within hours and swarm in mass numbers to relocate and find food. These locust swarms are sometimes called "plagues". 4) According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Rocky Mountain locust holds the title of greatest concentration of animals ever, with the 1875 swarm that was estimated to be bigger than the state of California, weighing 27.5 million tons and containing over 12 trillion locusts. 5) It was thought that the Rocky Mountain locust may be a different phase of a western grasshopper, but DNA testing from museum specimens seem to disprove that theory. 6) Specimens of the Rocky Mountain locusts can still be collected at Knife Point Glacier in Wyoming & Grasshopper Glacier in Montana. 7. During the western plagues, it was reported that Rocky Mountain locusts would eat all wheat, crops, wood, leather, sheep's wool, and sometimes the clothes off of people's backs. 8. Pioneers tried to fight these plagues by dynamiting their nesting grounds and inventing machines to kill mass numbers of locusts. All these attempts to control populations were in vain. 9. Some people try to adapt to the swarms in a different way & came up with locust recipes using salt & pepper and frying them in butter. 10. The swarms would even shut down the railroads. 11. Many western states offered bounties for baskets of dead locusts. In Nebraska there was a law stating that every male 16 - 60 had to spend 2 days killing locusts or face a $10 fine ($287 by today's standards). 12. 27 years after the massive swarm of 1875 plagued the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountain Locust was extinct. 13. The best theory about this locusts' extinction is that their limited "homebase" of 3 - 3,000 square miles near the fertile base of the Rocky Mountains was inadvertently destroyed when farmers plowed the native prairie grasses, began cultivating new crops, and introduced farm animals. Even though these swarms covered so much area on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, they only would only effectively breed in a small region, similar to the the way the Monarch butterflies spend their summers ranging 2,500 miles, only to return to the oyamel fir forests in the mountains of central Mexico for the winter. 14. There are over 11,000 species of grasshoppers. Only 10 of those species are 'swarming locusts'. 15. The Rocky Mountain locust was a favorite food for the Eskimo curlew during its migration, so when the locusts went extinct, the Eskimo curlew did also.