Animal Swarm Fatality

Bee swarm – Honeybees swarm when the colony grows too big for its current hive. The queen and up to 60 per cent of the worker bees leave the hive and settle on a tree branch a few metres away. Other workers scout out possible new nest sites over the course of a few days and then the swarm flies together to establish a new colony. Locust swarm – Locusts are the final adult stage of certain grasshopper species. In crowded conditions, the grasshoppers will change into a ravenous, fast-breeding form. The population quickly explodes into swarms of billions and each locust will eat its own body weight in plant matter every day. Large locust swarms can cover an area the size of Greater London. Sardine swarmStarling swarm – Starlings are highly social birds and will often congregate in large flocks of up to a million. This reduces the risk of predation from birds of prey as they move between roosting sites and feeding grounds, because the swirling mass is hard to target. Flocks often contain individuals from different species of starling. Sardine swarm – Every year, young sardines swim from the tip of South Africa, where they spawned, up the coast of Mozambique and into the Indian Ocean. It is thought that cold-water currents trigger this migration. The school can cover an area of 7.1 x 1.5 kilometres (4.4 x 0.9 miles) and 30 metres (98 feet) deep, containing billions of sardines. Up to 18,000 dolphins tag along to feed. Krill swarm – Krill are a shrimp-like crustacean. Antarctic krill have a total biomass twice that of all the humans in the world. Half of this is eaten every year and, to protect themselves, they band together in huge shoals that drift up and down in the water column every day. Wildebeest swarm – Wildebeest migrate annually across the Serengeti to follow the rainfall and most nutritious grass. Herds of 1.4 million travel 2,900 kilometres (1,800 miles) per year in a clockwise circle around eastern Africa. Wildebeest are powerful and aggressive, but they still need the additional security of the herd to protect them from hyenas and lions. Swar