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Sticker of Horehound bug
Bug card No. 2264 of 4,939

Horehound bug

Agonoscelis rutila
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasGardens and meadows6 legs

The horehound bug is a stink bug. It loves one plant most of all, the horehound, and sucks its juice through a mouth like a drinking straw. It lives in Australia.

Lives in
Australia, on horehound and other shrubs
Top speed
about 0.2 km/h (0.12 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
It cannot sting or hurt you. Like other stink bugs, it may make a bad smell if you bother it.
What does it eat?
It sucks sap from horehound plants. It also visits many other trees and shrubs.
For real!Photo of Horehound bug
Picture by Fir0002. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

When it sucks the juice, the new shoots of the plant go limp and droop.

2

A young horehound bug is called a nymph. It grows through five stages before it is grown up.

3

Sometimes lots of them gather in big swarms on trees and bushes, even ones that are not horehound.

you asked

Most asked questions about Horehound bug

?Is the horehound bug harmful?

Not to people. It can harm plants, because sucking their sap makes the new shoots wilt.

?What does the horehound bug eat?

It sucks the sap of the horehound plant, and sometimes of other trees and shrubs.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Agonoscelis rutila
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Family
Pentatomidae
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera > Pentatomidae
Lives on
Australia and Oceania

Where the facts come from

  1. Horehound bug (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Fir0002. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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