Invasion of the Stink Bugs

This week's Animal Oddity all started a few weeks ago when one of my National Wildlife Federation colleagues, Senior Scientist Doug Inkley, spotted a strange insect in his rural Maryland home. He instantly recognized it as the brown marmorated stink bug, an insect that was originally native to Asia but was accidentally introduced to North America a decade ago.

In that short time span, this stink bug has spread like wildfire, becoming a new agricultural pest and invading people's homes, where they spend the winter dormant.

With the recent warm days in the Mid-Atlantic states, the stink bugs have started waking up and becoming active and Dr. Inkley started noticing more and more inside his home. So, ever the inquisitive scientist, he decided to investigate to see just how many of these invaders his home harbored.

Watch this video to see the shocking results of his investigation (warning, not for the squeamish).

Find out everything you wanted to know about stink bugs, including information on how to deal with them in your home and garden, from the National Wildlife Federation.

This video from Animal Planet goes even deeper into these fascinating but troublesome insects.

Get the latest odd animal stories, news and behaviors on my blog, Animal Oddities.

And if you're a glutton for punishment and want to be freaked out be other insect oddities, you need to check out this, this and this.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

 

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Comments

[MikeAnderson]

07:08 PM on 04/05/2011

I had literally thousands of stink bugs invade my house and garden last year. It was horrible... My garden was a huge loss, I simply could not be there everyday to kill all the stink bugs on my plants. I was able to use the plan from http://www.how-to-get-rid-of-stink-bugs.com to get them out of my house, but my garden was still a total disaster. As a result, I am in favor of importing the wasps from China that kill them. Stink bugs need a natural predator in the wild or their numbers will keep growing!!!

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:12 PM on 02/19/2011

Best argument I've ever seen against so-called "intelligent design".
We need to somehow breed birds that like the taste of these things. Normal birds won't touch them, understandably.

[lightningbolt]

03:18 PM on 02/18/2011

These bugs have a great defense system.  If you squash them they will release one of the most foul stenches you can possibly imagine, and it sticks to everything around it.  I learned to stop killing them, and I'm sure most people stopped killing them after the first one taught them a lesson.  That's why there's so many of them now.

[blackwind]

05:04 PM on 02/19/2011

For me, when a big buzzy bug lands on me, I instinctively swat it.
God sent stink bugs to make me stop.