Natural Pest Control – Predators that Eat Pests

 

Natural Pest Control – Predators that Eat Pests

A Natural Form of Pest Control

Insects are a major player within the circle of life. They can simultaneously be predators and prey – providing both population control and sustenance. Unfortunately, a lot of these insects are also pests that want nothing more than to invade our homes and cause us a variety of problems. However, due to the fact that they are prey animals, there are thankfully a variety of different creatures that help naturally curb their populations, effectively serving as a form of natural pest control. In this blog, we highlight some of these animals and the different pests that they hunt.

Bats

Bats are often used in imagery of the macabre and have even become a symbol of Halloween, but in reality, these creatures are massively beneficial in a variety of ways and rarely, if ever pose any threat to humans. They can eat moths, stink bugs, crickets, June beetles, and, probably most famously, mosquitos. Shockingly, these nighttime flyers can catch and consume between 1,000 to 8,000 insects in a single night depending on the type, size, and age of the bat and what species of insect they hunt.

Opossums

Opossums may not be the prettiest, but they are extremely helpful when it comes to tick control. They LOVE feasting on ticks and can consume up to about 5,000 ticks during each tick season. They will both forage for ticks, and eat them off each other or themselves while grooming.

Frogs

Frogs are highly adept at catching insects and are even one of the most prolific insect eaters in the world. Their amazing abilities for catching their meals are all due to their incredible tongues. These stretchy, long tongues can be shot out of their mouths at staggering speeds, stretching sometimes far beyond the length of their bodies in order to strike at insects. Also, their saliva is uniquely a non-Newtonian fluid, meaning that that it does not have the properties of normal liquids such as freezing at low temperatures, moving in the same matter as normal liquids, and flowing as typical liquids do. As a comparison, another example of a non-Newtonian fluid is lava, proving that frog saliva is very peculiar indeed. Using these unique abilities and properties, frogs are able to eat flies, moths, mosquitos, crickets, and even spiders.

Birds

Birds are often depicted in images holding worms and there’s even the old adage, “the early bird gets the worm,” but birds eat a much wider variety of insects than just worms. Depending on the particular species of bird, they can eat stink bugs, aphids, ants, flies, larvae, beetles, earwigs, termites, moths, crickets, mosquitos, and even wasps.

Spiders

Many different insects and arachnids feed on one another, and spiders are no exception. These creepy crawlers dine on a variety of insects species as well as sometimes engaging in cannibalism as well. As such, very few pests are off of the menu for spiders.

Dragonflies

While dragonflies are another arthropod that consumes fellow arthropods, these colorful flyers are not considered pests. Rather, they tend to be fairly well-liked by people and are even used as a common “cute” design pattern on clothing jewelry, etc. Part of this may be due to their strikingly beautiful color patterns, and part of it may be due to the fact that they’re famous for reducing mosquito populations. In just one day, an individual dragonfly can consume between 30 to several hundred mosquitos, as well as their larvae and eggs.

Chickens

It may be surprising, but chickens are actually very prominent pest-predators. Many insects are rich in protein, making them a nice treat for foraging hens. Crickets, spiders, flies, beetles, termites, centipedes, ants, moths, maggots, grubs and even ticks are all on the menu for hungry chickens. While they primarily feed off of these insects and arachnids from the ground or on low hanging foliage, they have also been observed picking some of them (such as ticks) off one another in a grooming fashion.

Pest Control Allies

While we continue the battle of protecting homes and businesses against pests, these natural pest control allies are working equally as hard keeping the populations of these nasty creatures in check.

Citations

Blakemore, E. (2017) Special Spit Helps Frogs Get a Grip on Insects, Smithsonian Magazine. The Smithsonian Institute. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/special-spit-helps-frogs-get-grip-insects-180962003/ (Accessed: November 25, 2020). Martin, M. (2020) What Animals Eat Ticks? [Natural Predators], Bug Lord. Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Available at: https://buglord.com/what-animals-eat-ticks/ (Accessed: November 30, 2020). Things That Eat Mosquitoes (no date) Mosquito Magnet®. Available at: https://www.mosquitomagnet.com/articles/things-eat-mosquitoes (Accessed: November 30, 2020).