Up to 1,000 egg pods have been found in one square metre. Swarms can travel about 5-130 km or more in a day. Locusts can stay in the air for long periods of time. For example, locusts regularly cross the Red Sea, a distance of 300 km. In the past there have been some spectacular and very long distance swarm migrations, for example from North-West Africa to the British Isles in 1954 and from West Africa to the Caribbean, a distance of 5,000 km in about ten days in 1988.
Locust swarms can vary from less than one square kilometre to several hundred square kilometres.
There can be at least 40 million and sometimes as many as 80 million locust adults in each square kilometre of swarm. Chitin is the most important constituent of the cuticle or exoskeleton of the Desert Locust. When conditions are favourable for reproduction, locust numbers increase and when they are not, numbers decrease either by natural mortality or through migration. Often favourable conditions may exist in the desert but there are no locusts present. Up until 1921, it was thought that the Desert Locust was actually two different species of locusts.