Blog About Animals

Since the Nasa Phoenix landed on Mars, the other day, I have had a renewed interest in aliens. So it was strange for this to happen!

My girlfriend has been trying to tell me that out house is the home of some very odd insects. Her descriptions of a multi legged, big eyed monster of a beast sounded like and alien life form. I must be honest. I was dubious…… but then yesterday, she caught one. And I got some photos.

I know I had never seen anything like this, and it scared the life out of me! It was about 1.5 inches long and had 16 legs (a few were lost when it got trapped in the glass). Sightings of them , in this house, had been seen up to 4 inches, with many more legs.

I had to apologize to my girlfriend for not believing her and now I had seen one, I could not rest until I found out.

As you probably predicted it isn’t an alien.

After an extensive Google image search, I found out that it is in fact a House Centipede.

It looks quite different from your average centipede, as it’s eyes are pronounced and it has 2 long legs for grabbing onto prey. Luckily prey isn’t humans, they feed on things like spiders, silver fish and bed bugs. So not too bad to have around the house then!

Some web sites said that they are capable of biting humans but it is very rare and likely to hurt no more than any normal insect bite.

As you can see the bigger ones look even more like aliens:

For detailed info you can check out this great fact sheet on house centipedes from Harvard.

Have you ever encountered these bugs or anything like it?

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