So what we found that instead of this being some collective, cooperative behaviour, what we have in fact is a forced march. Every cricket is trying to eat the one ahead and prevent itself from being eaten from behind. We found that they were very aggressive with each other, attacking an immobile insect within 17 seconds and really jumping on it and biting it. So one may then ask questions; why, if it's so dangerous to be in a swarm, why don't they leave? But another colleague at the University of Sydney, Greg Sword, using tiny little radio transmitters on these crickets found that it's even more dangerous to leave the group because they get eaten by predators. So really they're making the best of a rather bad situation.
[WS:] They must be radical left-winged crickets :-)
Wojtek
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