What Are The Most Common Arthropods That Live Within Our Homes?

The one good thing about living in a tiny apartment as opposed to a large home is that there is a much lesser chance of encountering a creepy bug. Less space equals lesser space for bugs to roam, right? Well, it really depends on where you live. If you live in the country surrounded by the natural environment you are more likely to encounter arthropods within your home than, say, an apartment dwelling New Yorker surrounded by concrete. But experts often see the same types of bugs when searching for arthropod life within people’s homes.

Some of the most common arthropods researchers encounter inside of houses include the carpet beetle, the masked bedbug hunter, book louse, house centipede, and cellar spiders. Cellar spiders are well known to people who have wool carpets, or used to have wool carpets until carpet beetles started destroying them with their larvae. And the house centipede is particularly unsettling since now I know that a creature as ugly as a centipede is so used to living in houses with people that a whole species is named for it! Look out for this centipede if you see it, its first pair of legs are poison fangs!

If you found a house centipede within your home would you call an exterminator, or would you kill it yourself and hope to never see one again? This is assuming you don’t think they make good pets.