8 ms·
The obvious answer is centipedes. If you are going to have to tolerate any kind of bug in your house, Scutigera Coleoptrata, the common house centipede, is the
by jp57 3y ago
The obvious answer is centipedes. If you are going to have to tolerate any kind of bug in your house, Scutigera Coleoptrata, the common house centipede, is the one to have.
These creepy, long-legged brown centipedes were familiar to everyone I knew growing up in the northeastern US. They are shy of people and tend to stay in the basement at night and only come out at night when it's dark, cool, and quiet (increasing their creepiness).
The upside? They eat other bugs, including many pests like termites, cockroaches, and bedbugs.
- koolba 3y agoIf you have centipedes in your house then de facto you have other bugs. They’re strictly carnivores. So as cool and helpful as they are, their continued existence indicates you have other problems as well. Best to consider them like Sully in the movie Commando: “I like you. I’m gonna kill you last.”
- _dark_matter_ 3y agoHow is it possible to have a house with no insects? I just don't even see that as feasible, except maybe for a small new house with no shrubbery (and probably in a desert environment?). There ain't no way you're living in a house with zero bugs.
- koolba 3y agoI’m not saying there can be zero bugs. I’m saying if you regularly find centipedes, then there’s enough other bugs to sustain them. They don’t just go outside to hit up a local cafe then come back home after. Plus, they can live for 5-6 years. The bigger they are, the longer they’ve been there too.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoI won’t say I have zero but it’s very few. I can go weeks without seeing an insect indoors.
- xerox13ster 3y agoAnecdotally, as a foster kid at one point I lived in a new construction home in the desert outside Reno with no shrubbery (newly poured walkways so no landscaping) and there frequently being scorpions in the natal kid's play area.
- amelius 3y agoIt's not like the centipedes are going to farm the bedbugs.
- jp57 3y agoThis is like saying that the continued existence of Burmese pythons in the Everglades implies that the small mammals (and other python prey) are definitely doing fine and their numbers are just as high as always, of course, because otherwise all the pythons would be dead.
- jbaber 3y agoMy house isn't a sealed system, though, at the bug-sized level. Having some sentries whose diet is invaders seems good to me.