The Benefits of 5 Common Pests

by Ben Dennison

Pests - can’t live with them, can’t live without them. This old adage couldn’t be truer than with insects, as illustrated by these five examples:

1. Fire Ants

Also known as the surly assholes of the insect world, fire ants are a plague in the southern and western areas of the United States. Notoriously aggressive and capable of a painful sting, fire ants are also very difficult to kill. Once a mound and colony is constructed, even commercial remedies fail to kill more than a handful of workers ants and leave the queen entirely untouched. When faced with the slaughter of their comrades, the remaining ants will simply abandon their current home and move somewhere else nearby. And if you’re thinking you can drown them, I’ve got some bad news for you.

No one wants to see fire ants go more than farmers. Mounds often destroy equipment, and did we mention they were aggressive… like swarm and kill children aggressive?

Why We Need Them: If farmers were somehow able to rid their property of fire ants, they also might as well be throwing money out an open window. That’s because fire ants are great predators that regularly suppress other, greater pests that destroy crops. In fact, fire ants are among the most abundant predators of plant-feeding insects in their territory. Fire ant populations are capable of protecting corn, soybean, cotton and peanut crops.

A tiny Terminator.

Of course, it’s also true that fire ants feed on insects that are beneficial to the same crops (such as wasps and the awesomely named “assassin bug”). But you have to expect these sorts of things with vigilantes. Fire ants aren’t the savior American farmlands deserve, but they are the savior they need.

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