BBC Earth has released a video that takes viewers into the hidden world of insects and other small creatures, known to many as creepy crawlies. The footage ranges from vast swarms of desert locusts that devour everything in their path to a fearless close-up encounter with a praying mantis.
The video is part of BBC Earth's broader catalogue of natural history content, which the channel describes as spanning roughly 50 years of entertaining and thought-provoking programming. The description accompanying the video presents it as a window onto the natural world, highlighting stories, beauty and wildlife that are often overlooked by the public. It is described as dramatic and rare, and the channel positions its material as exclusive.
Desert locusts are among the most closely watched insects in the world because of the scale of the swarms they can form. According to the video's description, these swarms can consume almost everything in their path, making the species a subject of long-standing interest for researchers and for people whose crops and grazing lands lie in their route. The footage is built around the sheer density of these gatherings, which is central to the spectacle the video seeks to capture. The description does not give swarm sizes or the areas affected, so the video itself is the primary record of what it shows.
The encounter with the praying mantis offers a contrasting view of insect life. Mantises are predatory insects known for their upright, grasping forelegs and their stillness while hunting. The video's framing of the encounter as fearless points to the close, unhurried observation that wildlife filmmakers use to reveal behaviour that is difficult to see with the naked eye. Where the locusts show collective mass movement, the mantis shows solitary, patient hunting.
The video is also promoted alongside other BBC Earth collections. Its description links to a playlist of the channel's best material, a playlist of animal fights, a set of videos running over 10 minutes, and series titled Planet Earth III, Frozen Planet II and Blue Planet II in 4K. Viewers are invited to subscribe to the channel and to sign up for its newsletter for updates and exclusive content, which the channel says includes news, updates and exclusives from BBC Earth.
For readers interested in the smaller end of the animal kingdom, the release is a reminder that insects make up a large share of the planet's animal diversity and play key roles in ecosystems, from pollination to serving as food for other species. The description also notes that the material is a commercial page from BBC Studios, with service information and feedback available through the company's contact details. Desert locusts and praying mantises illustrate two very different sides of that diversity, one defined by collective movement and the other by solitary, patient hunting.
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