Is there any invertebrate creepier than the house centipede (AKA “thousand-legger”)? I grew up in Upstate New York, and had never encountered one of these until I first moved to southeastern PA around 1993. The first time I saw one skitter across the living room while I was watching TV, I thought for sure I’d seen some kind of demon–a lesser demon, granted, but a demon nonetheless.
Turns out it’s just Scutigera coleoptrata, a fast-moving type of centipede that lives mostly within human homes and eats spiders, roaches, bedbugs, silverfish, and other small insect-types that also invade human dwellings. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, and if you’ve been fortunate enough never to have encountered one, you have no idea just how disconcerting the sight of fifteen pairs of legs moving in a coordinated wave can be as this sizeable critter slashes across a floor or wall.
Since we got our dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback mix, we haven’t had much problem with these little guys. We just say “Copper, bug!” and he goes into full-on hunting dog mode, enthusiastically sniffing out the centipede before crushing it to death with his paws, and then typically tossing it around a bit before eating it. Unfortunately, he’s recently taken to retching — and I mean, retching — after eating one, so we’re not letting him do that any more. I looked up information on the house centipede, and it appears that their venom is not dangerous to house pets, though their bite is recorded as painful. After finding a close-up photo of a house centipede face, all I can say is yikes. I’m not surprised their bite is painful, check out those fangs!
(Photo after the jump)
If you do have these around, you might like to know that they are generally considered beneficial (see the list of undesirables that they are doing away with?) and that a concerted effort to kill off house centipedes might reveal a bug problem of another sort that you never knew you almost had… That, and their bites are apparently really painful to people, too. At least as painful as a bee sting.
On a related note, my search for information and photos of Scutigera coleoptrata led me to Dope on the Slope, a pretty cool Brooklyn-based blog of invertebrates and photography. It’s not many blogs that really catch my interest, so I figured I’d give this one a plug.
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bugs are all disgusting.
In my home we call them magilapedes. There was one in our room and we ate it. We eat them all the time. In my humble opinion they best with the back legs shortened and covered in snail juices (hooray) peace out.
Its yo boy mohammad
these nasty things are all over my basement and i wasn’t aware that they bite until someone eles mentioned it and now i’m even more terrified than i was before.
These things are so ugly!!!! I see them everyday in my home from babys to large guys lol but I think one bit my child she has a ugly red swollen thing on her leg well we woke up and it is now oozing clear fluid from it ;( Hope it wasnt anything else since we also have scorpions !!!
lol, well I just caught one of these centipede’s in my bathtub, seen them before but they always got away from me! Apparently they can get into the tub easily but can’t scale back up the wall.
anyway I got him/her in a very small rubber maid container to show the rest of my family when they get up, should freak them out! As said they are very fast little critters and even in a bathtub they can’t get out of they are hard to capture, going to release it after I show everyone!We live in the foothills of North Carolina and have black widows, brown recluse and a host of other spiders and centipedes here so I would rather it kill those than to kill it!
i have seen these around from time to time. It is nice to know they are fighting off the nuisance bugs! i watched a video on YouTube of one dispatching TWO brown recluse spiders in no time at all. Amazing.
I have no fear of these miniscule runners. I grew up in Barbados in the Caribbean and we have the larger variety that grow to 4-8 inches. I got bit by both and that lil guy above was as bad as an ant bite, bigger ones can leave you black and blue for several days and the bite area looks like a small snake bite. Cherish your tiny friend since he is killing your spiders and bedbugs, while mine is eating lizards and mice
very well written.