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House Centipedes Get No Respect
by Dr. Donald Lewis
hroughout my 40+ years as an
Iowa State University Extension
Entomologist, I have encouraged
Tcallers to see the “good” in
house centipedes. I don’t think a single
homeowner has ever agreed with me
that there can be anything “good” about
a creature with that many legs, that runs
that fast, and frankly, looks plain creepy.
House centipedes (Scutigera) are
common arthropods that are not hard and beneath the bark of firewood stored
to identify. They have a long, flattened, indoors. They do not come up through the
yellowish-brown body with three dark drain pipes.
stripes on top, and up to 1½ inch long. Why are centipedes beneficial?
There is one pair of legs on almost every All of the approximately 8,000
segment of the body. It’s the legs that different species of centipedes in the
make the house centipede memorable. world eat small insects, spiders, and
There 15 pairs of very long, almost other arthropods. If they eat pests in
thread-like, slender legs. Dark and white your house, they are doing you a favor
bands encircle each leg. and thus are beneficial, though most
homeowners take a different point-of-view
Centipedes do not come up and consider them a nuisance.
through the drain pipes.
Technically, the house centipede
could bite, but it is considered harmless
See the BugGuide website at to people. Not so with other species of
https://bugguide.net/node/view/25 for centipedes found in other parts of the
more information and lots of excellent world. For example, the giant red-headed
house centipede pictures. centipede of Texas averages 6.5 inches
House centipedes can be found both long and up to 8 inches long. Giant read-
indoors and outdoors. However, it is headed centipedes are large and powerful
the occasional one on the bathroom or enough to pierce human skin and inject
bedroom wall, or the one accidentally venom. Carelessly handling a giant
trapped in the bathtub, sink, or lavatory centipede may result in a bite described as
that causes the most concern. Centipedes “intensely painful” but probably not fatal
found out in the open on the counter Centipede or Millipede?
or in the sink were wandering through. Centipedes and millipedes both have
Centipedes prefer to live in damp portions long, narrow bodies and lots of legs.
of basements, closets, bathrooms, Beyond that, the differences are evident
unexcavated areas under the house, (Continued on page 9)
IPMA Connection • 3rd Quarter, 2020 Page 7
