Do you know what kind of Bug this is?
By starr79
@starr79 (18)
Canada
October 15, 2011 1:42pm CST
I found this bug crawling in my apartment. It is not a cockroch or ant.
Have you ever seen it before?
2 responses
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Oct 11
It's a fairly small centipede. You can tell by the number of legs. Its head is to the right (as you can tell by the long antennae).
Ants, cockroaches and all other insects have six legs, spiders, mites and the like have eight legs and centipedes and millipedes have many more (one pair per segment).
Millipedes are vegetarians, have shorter legs and can curl up in a spiral. They are generally garden pests but otherwise harmless (though tropical millipedes can have a nasty bite).
Centipedes can run faster, are meat eaters (they eat very small bugs and mites) and tend to run away if threatened. On the whole, they are a gardener's friend.
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Oct 11
Incidentally, centipedes don't have 100 legs and millipedes don't have 1000!
@savypat (20216)
• United States
15 Oct 11
It looks like a silverfish, there are several different varities of these and they eat the same things cockrochs do. You might want to bring this to the attention of your landlord so that they can spray before these breed.
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
15 Oct 11
Silverfish are very primitive insects. They have six legs (and two long tails at the back). They are silvery in colour (hence the name), don't like light and mostly feed on mould and wallpaper paste (possibly because, when it's damp, it is also usually mouldy). If you see silverfish, you can be pretty sure that there is a regularly damp area not far away.
Silverfish and their relations, springtails, are far older than cockroaches, even.
