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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - They're a pest and often a plague on farmers and ranchers. But Daniel Fenn regards the greasy thumb-sized Mormon cricket with fascination, collecting the choicest specimens for study.
Fenn and two other researchers at Brigham Young University have taken a deep look inside the ravenous bug, mapping its gene sequence to figure out what makes the cricket tick.
Legend has it that crickets nearly destroyed the crops of Mormon settlers in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, until a swarm of California gulls swooped down to eat them. They're munching this summer on thousands of acres in Box Elder County. Nevada regularly deals with them, too.
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