House Centipede
Reader Andrew Lin takes us over to Phylum Arthropoda today with this picture of Scutigera coleoptrata, a House Centipede. Andrew took this photo last Fall in Sacramento, California. It’s about 2.5cm long.
Andrew says he finds these from time to time in his house; the house centipede is common throughout North America. (My last apartment had a thriving population of them.) House centipedes are extremely beneficial bugs to have in your house. They are, like all centipedes, crazy aggressive predators. They will decimate roach and cricket populations in your house if you let them.
Unfortunately for the house centipede, they are also way high on the creep factor, so they are not often tolerated. They move fast, have way too many legs for most people’s tastes, and they can inflict a painful bite if handled. According to the Internet, which knows all and never ever lies¹, a house centipede bite is about like a mild bee sting, but often the centipede’s tiny fangs are so small that they cannot pierce human skin.
Another cool fact about house centipedes: they have four legs when they hatch. When they molt, they grow additional legs: one pair after the first molt, then two pair after each subsequent molt until they have 15 pairs of legs.
Andrew also confirms that they are not openly aggressive towards humans: if you need to transport them out of the house, you can coax them into an open glass or onto a piece of paper. They’ll hold still while being moved, until you tip them out in the yard–at which point they invariably try to get back into the house².
Thanks for the picture, Andrew! This is great!
¹ Although censorship through speedy deletion is sometimes a problem. ZING!
² What part of “house centipede” do you not understand?
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
M said,
December 1, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
*wince*
I love bugs of all shapes, colors and sizes…I’ve had a yellowjacket wandering around my face without panicking, and I’ve been gently shepherding wayward arthropods out of the house (rather than letting my family squash them) for years now.
Centipedes, however, are just plain creepy.
Why couldn’t they be more like millipedes?
b13 said,
December 2, 2007 @ 12:09 am
The first time I saw one of these I totally freaked! I was lying on the living room floor watching TV and this thing was running right for my face… and FAST! I don’t think I ever moved quicker in my life… except for that time I walked into a full web and the spider skittered past my eye and over my head. *chills
mmaestro said,
December 3, 2007 @ 12:51 am
Finally! I know what this is. We used to keep getting them when I live in New Jersey. I never managed to get a good picture of one, but did experience one, when I picked it up on a piece of paper, rearing up on its haunches and hissing at me. Kind of a freaky experience. Honestly, if only I’d been able to identify what it was (and I tried, but it looks nothing like any centipede I’ve seen anywhere else) I might not have kept throwing them out.
bkd said,
December 4, 2007 @ 1:55 am
I’m with M on the centipede issue…millipedes, groovy, spiders, cool, roaches, cool, dispassionate termination. But something about centipedes reflexively engages my ninja bug assassin technique. Bees, cool, wasps, cautious and studied disengagement, houseflies, well, I approach dispatching them as a casual sport, much like mini-golf.
All that being said, I’ve never encountered the two-tone centipede, only the light brown/tan ones.
Reiver said,
December 5, 2007 @ 1:09 am
Do they have a fear of humans?
David Brady said,
December 5, 2007 @ 5:11 am
Reiver: Only the ones too big for them to eat….
The ones in my old apartment were nice enough neighbors. They’d skitter away when I got too close and didn’t act too aggressive when I deliberately chased and caught them. Given mmaestro’s comment, however, I suspect that this mellowness may be a regional species trait.
In general, they conform to generic centipede behavior: wander actively, flee from big moving things before they get close, and attack anything that it touches: if it is prey, it’s called hunting, if it’s a human, it’s called self defense….
Lorraine Ochoa said,
January 22, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
Are these the things that used to be called ’silverfish’ or are they an altogether different creepy?
Right there with ya, b13
David Brady said,
January 23, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
Hi Lorraine!
I thought exactly the same thing, and in fact when this image was sent to me I went to bugguide confident that it was a silverfish. Turns out that it’s a completely different critter. Here’s a silverfish: http://bugguide.net/node/view/48898
Insect Picture of the Day » Black Swallowtail Caterpillar said,
February 11, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
[...] a partial metamorphosis. You can think of it as a “stage” in development. For example, house centipedes start out with four legs, then grow an additional pair of legs every time they molt into a new [...]
Insect Picture of the Day » House Centipede said,
March 17, 2008 @ 8:44 am
[...] to welcome you back with special. Today’s picture comes from Andrew Lin, who sent us a picture of a house centipede once before. He says he caught this one in a glass and photographed it before releasing it [...]