Critters Can Do — Match the Pest and What It Does

Match the critter to what it does — or in one case, what natural force could kill it. (Answer key below.)

critter

can do
mouse 1 eats pests of crops or pollinates them — or both
cockroach 2 emerges from cocoon when it feels vibration of approaching host
aphid 3 makes tunnels within leaves
flea 4 killed by raindrops
wasp 5 squeezes through a hole the size of a dime
leaf miner 6 live weeks — perhaps months — without food
paper wasp
This wasp helps control pests while doing adjunct duty as a pollinator. Photo courtesy Ward Upham, Kansas State University, Bugwood.org.
leaf miner
This chrysanthemum leaf-miner is the larvae of a fly-family pest. Photo courtesy Central Science Laboratory, Harpenden Archive, Bugwood.org.

Answer key:

critter

can do
mouse 5
cockroach 6
aphid 4
flea 2
wasp 1
leaf miner 3

Where the links will take you:

  1. Some large stinging wasps eat crop pests; others help pollinate them. Some do both.
  2. Yes, different researchers say different things. Just know that cockroaches can survive without food for a couple of weeks and maybe much longer. (At need, “food” could include wallpaper paste, envelope glue, and more.)
  3. “For an aphid, a raindrop is something like what a refrigerator would be like falling on us,” said researcher Jeremy McNeil, an entomologist and chemical ecologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.
  4. Fleas can live a long time inside the cocoon they pupated in — until they sense a host nearby.
  5. Follow the link to a fun, one-minute video of a fat mouse scrambling through a tiny hole.
  6. Their name (they dig mines, as it were) gives them away — but you’d be surprised at how many different sorts of insects have larvae that burrow through something as thin as a leaf.