Science in the Glorious Quran: Locusts

“خُشَّعًا أَبْصَارُهُمْ يَخْرُجُونَ مِنَ الْأَجْدَاثِ كَأَنَّهُمْ جَرَادٌ مُّنتَشِرٌ” (القمر: 7).

“They will emerge from their graves with downcast eyes, like swarming locusts” (Qur’an, 54:7).

God in the above verse mentions that the emerging of humans at the Day of Judgment is like a swarm of locusts. Therefore, the question raised is why were locusts chosen by God as a similitude?

Locusts deposit their eggs in sandy soils like seeds in 10-15 cm-long tunnels in the ground. Each female locust lays 95-158 eggs at once for three times and up to 1,000 egg pods could be found in one square meter. The larvae remain underground for 10-65 days, depending on the temperature, and they all emerge together at the same time. A single locust swarm is large enough to cover 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) and contains between 40 and 80 million locusts per a single square kilometer.

The underground existence and the sudden emergence of locusts on the surface of the earth in a vast number (almost 100 billion locusts) at the same time resemble the resurrection of human beings at the Day of Judgment.

A, a swarm of locusts; B, a locust laying eggs, C and D, locusts hatching and emerging from the earth