Gee! I didn’t notice the spoons until you mentioned it, sorry! Must be a very small centipede then. Fully grown ones are about 10cm long, and they are very, very, very very fast. (But harmless)
Ah ok! havent seen them around here alive anywhere, maybe cause they re nightactive, as i read… The spoons are not too obvious in the pic, so understandable. Thank you again for all the info
You see, I think spiders are incredibly interesting animals. But I really can’t look at them. I guess my Mum screaming every time something with more than 4 legs appeared had a lasting impact on me. So having one next to me while I sleep is nightmare stuff to me.
When I was younger and I had roommates I hated it when they killed the house spiders. It was the reason we had so many other bugs. Once that roommate moved out, the rest of us stopped killing the spiders and after a burst of spiders the rest of the bugs were gone. House bugs are very creepy but they keep the bad house bugs away. Like bedbugs. Fuck bedbugs and the evolutionary niche they’ve crawled out from.
Honestly yeah, actually the building I previously moved out of had both. So I just kept very tidy by keeping everything they’d be attracted to sealed and away and left the cockroaches alone. It was a lot though, every night throw out all the garbage. Seal and put away all the food, if food can not be easily sealed put it in the fridge. Clean up all the crumbs and any drops of water on the floors, counters shelfs, ect. Lightly Borax the sinks, toilet, tubs. Then wake up, collect the ones that died overnight, clean up and go about my day. Oh and make sure you take apart then make your bed every morning and night to make sure nothing else crawled in there. They were never more than a small nuisance and I never had bedbugs compared to my neighbors. Yay adorable housing… So glad to be outta there.
House centipede. They eat other bugs and while scary looking are harmless. They like spiders appear from time to time without anything being wrong. They’re just looking for other bugs to eat.
Honestly hadd to say. Looks to me like an arthropod, and perhaps even an insect. Just maybe those extra legs are pseuodopods (like the fake legs of a caterpillar) of a nymph (juvenile). It could be a dragonfly larva? There is no indication of size, but seems like baby dragonfly that I have seen in the past. If small though, it could be a silverfish. Those aren’t insects, just arthropods, they are related to slaters.
Everyone is saying they’re harmless, but we read house centipedes cam leave painful bites. I’ve never been bitten, that I know of, but when plagued with centipedes, I’d sometimes wake up with one of two types of mysterious bug bites: itchy, and painful. I know from prior experience that most North American spider bites are only ever itchy, so I always put the painful ones down to house centipedes. I can’t prove it, though. Here are the facts I do know about house centipedes, from empiricle evidence:
They like damp. You’ll find them in damp spots, drains, around toilets, around damp areas in basements, etc. Not exclusively, but predominantly.
They wage a secret war with spiders. Sometimes the spider wins, but usually the centipede does unless it gets trapped by a web.
Alive, they move like the wind. Shockingly, alarmingly fast.
When smacked, they explode into air and legs. So many legs, and not much else.
Despite reports that they control other bugs, they are useless against real nuisance bugs like soldier and stink bugs. And for fly control, spiders do a better job. The only real thing we ever saw centipedes hunting were spiders.
Small glue traps work really well at controlling them. I caution against large glue traps, as they might catch small rodentia, and if you want to know true horror, find a YouTube video of a mouse caught in a glue trap.
Centepides actually only have 6 legs. You can see the six real legs if you look closely at a picture. The other “legs” work like legs, but are not actually legs.
As far as I’m aware, if it’s got upwards of 350 legs, those are called millipedes, not centipedes.
Also, I’ve never in my life seen either a centipede or a millipede with legs anywhere near that long, so my mind is still stuck on WTF is that damn thing?
Any which way you go, I’d say kill it with fire! Even though it’s already dead, I wouldn’t wanna take any chances if it happens to have eggs in it or possibly a parasite or anything…
The difference between centipedes and millipedes actually has to do with how many pairs of legs they have per body segment. Centipedes have one pair per segment, millipedes have two pairs per segment. The centipede with 354 legs is indeed a centipede (: the millipede with the most legs actually tops out around 750 legs! Pill *millipedes seem to be the smallest millipede with only 14-42 legs!
Also, if you google pics of centipedes, there is indeed a species with terrifyingly long legs just like this picture, the house centipede.
Huh, interesting. Well today I learned a little more about creepy-crawlies than I expected. Also, a pill bug is considered a type of millipede? Well hell, I never would have guessed that.
I was actually very surprised to learn about the pill bug as well, if I’d known they were millipedes as a kid I would not have found them so cute and fun lol
No, a pill bug is not a type of millipede, they’re actually crustaceans, and not closely related.
Pill bugs used to be one of the few exclusively terrestrial crustaceans, but now almost all insects are classified as crustaceans, so, i’d have to double check the phylogenies.
Oh? Okay then, well either way I’ve learned something new today. Interesting, not like it’s going to change the price of weed in Colorado for my daily life, but thanks for sharing. 👍
No, a pill bug is not a type of millipede, they’re actually crustaceans, and not closely related.
Pill bugs used to be one of the few exclusively terrestrial crustaceans, but now almost all insects are classified as crustaceans, so, i’d have to double check the phylogenies.
I’d say a small asteroid impact will take care of it. Something about the size of the tanushka event seems appropriate. Just be sure to pre-warn all of the neighbours within a 500 mile radius.
That’s why you always find dead garden millipedes curled up in a spiral. The odd number of legs makes them walk in circles until they die from it. “True” story.
Generally bug bites are more often from beetles than centipedes or spiders, meaning centipedes and spiders generally lower how many bug bites you’d be getting.
Dude, what kind of beetles do you have around you‽ Where I live, I’m pretty confident there are no biting beetles - at least, none that can do any harm to humans.
You have way more beetles than you think you do, and far more beetles than you believe can bite. If you can find a spider, there are dozens of beetles that it’s feeding on, in an over simplified way.
You’re team spider unless you live in Australia and like all animals in Australia the spiders are no exception.Spiders kill, spiders eat burbs, spiders fly. Yup they fly, it’s nightmare material.
I’ve also been bitten by a centipede in bed while sleeping and woken up in so much pain I threw up(#australiathings). How did I know it was a centipede? It was still in the bed. They are not nice. But I’m still all for them eating the spiders.
Your bullet points sound like an RTS (real time strategy) game’s description of a unit. I would prefer neither around me, let them wage war (or set up home) elsewhere preferably.
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