Wot does the starving guy do (spoilerish)

[Squiz Milton]

Starving man gobbled 5 of me buggies and died. Tried to savescum and the game shat on me. Why did this happen?

[Tawa]

I gave him about 13 buggies and he still starved. I don't know if there's a certain number he needs to eat or not. Or if he's just a trap?

[Dr. Strangelove]

i gave him 25 or so and he turned into a rock after a couple of turns

[Squiz Milton]

Yeah he's just a gobbler methinks.
PS you can push him even without giving him any at all

[postal]

Honestly I'm not sure. I think you only have to give him either 5 or 10 locusts, then walk away from him, to trigger the falling over event.

There IS a benefit to having your locust count at a specific number, but it's kept as a secret. It's possible to climb onto the HUD if the room doesn't have a border at the bottom (easily done at the tree rooms), and then you can swap the last two digits of the floor number with the two digit locust number. This way you can go forward/backwards to whatever stage you want. You can lower your locust account by just jumping into a hole over and over, but if you're playing on a "VOID" run (aka infinite lives, triggered by eating the fruit from that weird flying monster after losing all your lives), I think these starving guys are the only way to lower that count. So, I guess that's their purpose?