Pest & Termite Control Blog

It has been said many times before that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, a recent news story from Singapore may have you rethinking your morning bowl of Special K, unless you enjoy the taste of maggots, flies and certain web-spinning spiders, of course. It is hard to believe that the good people at Kellogg’s would stock store shelves with insect-infested cereal products, but several boxes of Special K have been reported by consumers to contain a variety of gross insects. Of course, officials with the cereal company were not aware of the fact that many of their cereal products had become compromised by insects, but that is not helping unlucky consumers forget about the maggots that they had inadvertently eaten with their morning cereal. The public, as well as representatives with Kellogg’s, first learned of the insect-infested cereal products after several affected consumers posted photos to Facebook that showed the bugs in their cereal.

Once Facebook user posted videos of the maggots that he had found within two boxes of Special K. The user claimed that he had purchased two boxes of Special K for his brother, as it is, or was his brother’s favorite cereal product. Both boxes contained maggots. Another Facebook user also purchased to boxes of Special K and, you guessed it, both boxes contained insects, most of which were maggots. What will surprise you is that each of her boxes were purchased from different stores, indicating that the amount of insect-contaminated Special K products may be more numerous than the Kellogg’s company is letting on.

In response to the many posts, and the many more phone calls from customers that don’t like their Special K with maggots, representatives for Kellogg’s have claimed that all boxes of contaminated cereal have been removed from store shelves. Apparently, the insects gained entrance into the newly introduced cereal bags after manufacturers mishandled the product. You may want to avoid Special K for a week or two, just to be sure.

If you found maggots in your store-bought cereal, would you bother on complaining? Or would you simply file a lawsuit as quickly as possible?

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Humans have a plethora of medicine and chemical concoctions to help us when we’ve got an upset stomach, but what about all of the animals in the wild that can’t just run to the pharmacy for a quick fix? A recent study led by Louise Peckre of the German Primate Center at the Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Germany found that the red-fronted lemurs in Madagascar use millipedes to fix all of their tummy troubles.

While observing five different groups of red-fronted lemurs in the Kirindy Forest on Madagascar, Peckre and her colleagues noticed that some of the animals in the groups were munching on millipedes that had emerged after a large rainstorm. While they were chewing on them, large amounts of an gooey orange substance, which they assumed was a mixture of saliva and the guts coming out of the millipedes being chewed. After much chewing, the lemurs then spread this goo on their genitals, anuses, and tail. They also ate many of the millipedes. Peckre and her fellow researchers believe that this self-anointment put together with the eating of the millipedes is likely a method of self-medication.

The lemurs likely use these millipedes specifically because they secrete benzoquinone, which is known to repel mosquitos. The researchers explain that by self-anointing themselves with the chewed up millipedes the lemurs clean themselves of parasites that can wind up in their intestines, gastric system, and Oxyuridae nematodes (these cause irritation around the area of their anus). If a lemur gets infested with these parasites, the worms and their eggs cause them to get an itchy rash on their skin. Peckre and her colleagues believe that the lemurs use the millipedes to treat the condition as well as prevent it.

The researchers intend to look further into different animals using millipedes in a similar manner. They specifically want to compare animals that anoint themselves with the millipede secretions but do not eat them with the animals that do both. They postulate that primates that are more exposed to digestive parasites are likely to eat the crushed millipedes as well as anoint themselves with them. This could also lead to millipedes possibly being useful for human medicine in the future.

Have you ever seen an animal rubbing an insect or a chewed insect on their body? What did you think they were doing?

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Insect pests are a major problem for farmers all over the world. The particular insect pests that cause the greatest damage to crops change from year to year. One year some farmers may fear crop damage from mites, while the next year may see more aphids than mites. Not knowing which insect pest will be most problematic to a crop within a given season obviously makes eradicating them a difficult task. Typically, farmers will apply the same insecticides to their crops every year, but one single insecticide may be more effective at killing one type of pest over another. Also, failing to switch up pesticides can result in insect pests developing genetic resistance to a particular insecticide. The job of eradicating insect pests from crops would certainly be much easier if agricultural workers knew which types of insect pests they would be dealing with before the season starts. In addition to killing insect pests, farmers want to preserve beneficial insects that kill harmful ones. Unfortunately, insecticides also kill beneficial pests if the right ones are not used. As it turns out, several academics from multiple universities have developed an insect-monitoring device that can give farmers an idea of which insect pests will become the greatest threat to their crops.

Researchers have developed a new insect monitoring device that they are calling FlightSensor. This device analyzes the different insects that are flying around in the sky above a crop. This device can count the number of individual insects present over an area above a crop, as well as how many different species of insects exist over a crop. Not only that, but the device can even identify each particular species of insect that comes near a crop in any given period of time. For example, before the growing season, during the winter and into early spring, the device can be used to track insect populations near a crop. This preventative monitoring can allow farmers enough time to identify the particular pests that will cause the most harm to their crops, thus enabling them to choose the proper insecticides for the job.

Do you think that this insect monitoring device will be in regular use within the next decade?

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