Stink bugs have a strange appetite

What’s small, has four legs and an enormous appetite? Here’s a hint – it also smells like rotten eggs!

It’s a stinkbug! Spined Soldier Bugs, one of the Stinkbug varieties, are being used in America as a natural pest control in crops because they can eat up to 100 bugs and pests in a season.

A big problem for farmers is the damage caused by pests while their plants grow. Sometimes a whole crop can be ruined, meaning that the farmer loses money and we have no corn or potatoes, or worse still, we find bugs in our lettuce!

Normally, farmers might use harsh chemicals that kill the pests, but also kill many other harmless creatures, like butterflies or even birds, in an effort to maintain the quality of the crops.

So what do the stinkbugs do?

Soldier Bugs eat over 100 other species and are especially fond of immature insects. This is helpful because they eat the bugs before they are old enough to damage the crops.

By using natural pest controls such as the stinkbug, the use of chemical pesticides is reduced. This means the food we eat is cleaner and less polluted, and no other creatures are harmed.