House Centipedes: To Kill or Not to Kill
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Understanding their behavior and taking precautions to reduce encounters with them is often the best approach to coexisting with house centipedes in your home. If you find house centipedes in your home, gentle capture and release outside or non-lethal pest control methods are the best approaches to deal with them. The reason house centipedes are in your home is that they’re looking for food, which happens to be other insects you don’t want inside your home.
Centipedes vs. Millipedes
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Centipede bites rarely cause health complications in humans, and aren’t typically dangerous or fatal. House centipedes feed on bedbugs, termites, cockroaches, silverfish, spiders and other household pests. They kill their prey by injecting venom through their fangs and then eating the dead prey.
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They possess maxillipeds, which are a modified pair of front legs. These legs curve around the head and behind mandibles, and they enter a victim’s tissue to inject venom. The venom is produced by a gland at the base of their fangs, which they release when capturing prey, squeezing the muscles around it and shooting poison through tiny ducts. Unlike most other centipedes, house centipedes and their close relatives have well-developed faceted eyes. Depending on the size and species, some centipedes may hunt small animals like lizards, snakes, birds, and frogs. As generalist carnivores, they will attack any soft-bodied creature they feel capable of killing and eating.
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One of the most humane ways to reduce the number of outdoor centipedes is to take away the places they hide. Get rid of any boards, compost piles, leaf piles, rocks, or trash piles you have cluttering up your space, and they’ll have to find somewhere else to stay. Speaking of wet, that brings us to our following recommendation.
Take Away Their Food Supply
To avoid bites while outdoors, be careful when reaching into woodpiles or under stones. The pests lurk in dark, hidden areas and may bite people or pets if they appear to pose a threat. Pest control is a successful way that millions of people reduce bugs in their homes. It’s common to use pest services during warm months, but it’s just as important to stay protected and prepared during the winter.
Termite Control
Centipede infestations typically happen when there is an insect infestation of another source. House centipedes can bite when they feel threatened, but their bites are not typically a cause for concern. These creatures are more inclined to avoid humans and are generally harmless.
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How Aggressive Are Common Centipede Species?
Since centipedes protect your home from other harmful insects, it’s perfectly fine to leave the centipede where it is. It won’t harm you, and it will make sure that your home is free from other harmful insects that you certainly want to get rid of. If you find a centipede in your home, there is no reason to kill it. In fact, they actually make your home safer because they are carnivores that will eat other insects that can cause damage to your home.
It can kill bugs in only a few minutes, giving the centipede plenty of freedom to eat it without much struggle. So, use their presence as an indicator of other potential infestations happening under your nose! You might be dealing with termites, roaches, or a host of other household pests. These bugs wouldn’t be around if they didn’t have the means to survive. Complications from centipede bites may result from infection or from damage to the skin and tissue where the bite occurred.
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Although house centipedes don’t pose a threat to humans and don’t typically harm infrastructure, seeing them in your home can be alarming. Unlike moths, they won’t destroy clothing or furniture, and unlike ants, they won’t wreak havoc in your pantry. While their cousins, millipedes, are herbivores that feed on wood, the house centipede is a carnivore that feasts on other insects. They use their jaws to inject poison into prey, but it’s very unlikely for one to bite a human unless it was being handled roughly. If you did sustain a bite, it would feel like a mild bee sting.
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The methods used will vary depending on exactly what types of insects are in your home and the extent of the infestation. They can also discuss prevention with you to keep the insects from getting back inside your home and to make sure the centipedes will not want to go in your home again. Centipedes bites, while painful, rarely cause severe health complications in people.
Install window screen in basement floor drains to prevent centipedes from entering from dry sumps. Some of the plates covering the body segments fused and became smaller during the evolution to the current state of S. The resulting mismatch between body segments and dorsal plates (tergites) is the cause for this centipede's rigid body. They don’t leave much of a trail, so you often have to see them to get rid of them. But if you come across one, there are numerous natural remedies for centipedes, along with using chemicals. In North America, you most often will find centipedes outside in moist locations, hiding under protective areas such as stones, leaves, and logs.
Centipede bites may look similar to bites from other more dangerous insects. If you aren’t sure what bit you, see a doctor, especially if your symptoms are severe. All centipedes have the ability to bite, although some smaller species are not strong enough to puncture human skin. Unlike its shorter-legged but much larger tropical cousins, the house centipede can live its entire life inside a building. Centipedes are nocturnal, leaving their daytime cover to find food.
They are usually seen crawling along the ground or floor, but they are capable of climbing walls. Although house centipedes are “good” bugs, they may still make your skin crawl. If you don’t want to share your home with them, rather than squash them, relocate them outside, where they’ll continue to provide pest control. Trap a centipede the same way you would a spider, by dropping a cup or jar over it and then sliding a piece of paper underneath to seal it inside.
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