About two years ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Emily Bick went down a research rabbit hole.
She was trying to find a way to stop moths in Indonesia from destroying sugarcane crops. In her research, she learned that spy agencies used to attach microphones to walls and translate the vibrations into speech.
She wondered if she could use those methods to detect and identify pests that destroy crops in the field.
“If we know exactly when and where the insects show up, then we can precisely target those insects,” Bick said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “We can do that true precision agriculture approach — versus right now, we tend to spray on a calendar or spray on some limited scouting data.”
Bick then invented the “insect eavesdropper.” The device attaches to crops and records the sounds of pests. She spies on the insects as they damage crops like corn and soybeans.
She has bugged the bugs.
As some of these pests eat the crops from underground, the recordings aim to tell researchers information without removing the crop from the soil.