Why do pests prefer wood, paper, or fabric?

The idea that pests target 'anything organic' obscures a more useful and more specific truth: each pest on this list is drawn to wood, paper, or fabric for a different reason, and knowing which reason applies tells you what's actually at risk. Termites eat cellulose because their gut protozoa can digest it, and wood is simply concentrated cellulose to them. Powderpost beetles target starch specifically, which is why they attack certain hardwood sapwoods and ignore others entirely. Wasps use wood fiber purely as raw material for nest paper, gaining no food value from it whatsoever. Carpenter ants use wood purely as nesting space to excavate, with zero nutritional interest in it. Fabric and stored-product pests go after starches and natural animal fibers in cloth and grain.

That's five different reasons producing what looks, from the outside, like one broad 'pests eat wood and fabric' phenomenon. It isn't one phenomenon — it's five specific and well-documented mechanisms.

Per USU Extension, termites are 'dependent on gut protozoa to aid in digestion,' and Britannica details that flagellate protozoa secreting cellulase and cellobiase in the hindgut are essential — without them, 'termites... would starve.' Because the driver is genuine nutrition rather than nesting convenience or building material, termites will forage indiscriminately for any cellulose source near soil, including structural framing, and that's why termites sit at the top of this entire cluster's damage ledger. Nothing else in this preference list causes damage at that scale or severity.

Dry wood is a poor target for almost everything on this list. Decay fungi require moisture to establish, and once they do, they partially break down cellulose in a way that makes the wood easier for termites to digest and easier for carpenter ants to excavate. Powderpost beetles and old-house borers both need elevated wood moisture to develop successfully. Termites themselves require high humidity to survive away from soil contact. This is why the single most useful thing this whole cluster can tell a homeowner is to name moisture as the shared root cause — fixing a leak addresses the attractiveness of the wood to nearly every pest on this list at once, rather than treating each pest as an isolated problem.

Synthetic fabrics, metal, glass, and masonry simply aren't food, nesting material, or building material for any pest on this list — there's no cellulose, starch, or natural fiber for them to exploit. Sound, dry wood with no moisture exposure is a weak target across the board, and painted or sealed wood surfaces are rarely attacked by wasps or carpenter bees in the first place. The honest picture is a specific, bounded target list driven by cellulose, starch, and moisture — not an indiscriminate threat to everything organic in a home.