With a less-than-pleasant smell and habit of snacking on fruits or vegetables in your garden, reading facts about stink bugs may be the last thing you want to do. But if these stink bug facts don’t completely disgust you, they might just change your opinion about this stinky bug.
Travelers from a foreign land
While many stink bugs are native to the lands they graze, the one that most people have become concerned about – the brown marmorated stink bug – is actually from Asia. It was first discovered in the United States over a decade ago, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This crop-damaging bug has since spread to 41 states.
Wanted by the government
It’s hard to make allies when your scent just isn’t up to snuff. It’s worse when the United States government is after you. In 2013, the United States Department of Agriculture launched the “Stop Stink Bug Project,” calling for volunteers around the country to take reports on stink bugs in their areas. The project was part of a study to help researchers decide how prevalent stink bugs had become and what might be done to control them.
Color-coordinated
If you like cilantro in your guacamole, you might try it with stink bugs too. The smell these bugs give off when threatened is made up of the same components as cilantro.
Taste worse than they smell
You shouldn’t actually put these bugs in your dip, however. According to the Central Maine website, scientists – in an attempt to better understand why other animals were so put off by the smell of a stink bug – decided to take things one step further and actually taste the juice of a stink bug. What they experienced was “a burning sensation and chemical taste that lingered for up to 20 minutes … followed by a slight localized numbness of the tongue, which lasted 1-2 hours.”
Wasp retaliation
Some researchers have become so desperate for a stink bug management solution, they have considered bringing a special species of wasps into the United States.
If you have stink bugs, facts about them aren’t going to make them go away any quicker. If these facts aren’t making you feel any better about the pests in or around your home, call Terminix® and let a pest management professional sniff the trouble out for you.