Since the advent of agriculture, man has suffered losses of his crops to various pests. In 1859, in the introduction to his book Farm Insects, John Curtis wrote ‘… little attention has, comparatively, been paid to those animals which annually consume an amount of produce that sets calculation at defiance, and indeed if an approximation could be made to the quantity thus destroyed, the world would remain sceptical of the result obtained, considering it too marvellous to be received as truth’.