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Common Household Bugs: Bet You Didn’t Know These Facts

27
Nov

A team of entomologists (scientists who study bugs) searched through 50 homes in Raleigh, North Carolina, collecting every arthropod (bug) they could find. The results of their search might surprise you…

How many bugs?

Researchers found something in every room of every home. In fact, the team of entomologists found between 32 and 211 different species of arthropods. How many bugs total? The tally of the total number of bugs found across all 50 homes was more than 10,000 bugs. Most of these bugs are very small creatures that we’ve been living with most or all of our lives and have never noticed.

What kind of bugs?

The interesting thing is that the bugs they found were not dominated by the most common household pests people usually think of. When people think of pests, they usually think of fleas, cockroaches and bed bugs. The research team found that only 10% of the houses had fleas, only 6% had cockroaches and none had bed bugs. The arthropods they did find in most or all of the homes were ants, cobweb spiders and carpet beetles. Other common bugs the team collected in their search were book lice (harmless fungus-eating lice), gall midges (bugs that infest and cause tumor-like growths in plants) and fungus gnats.

The team had a few unexpected finds, as well. One such unexpected find was the telephone-pole beetle, a member of a family of bugs that has long been extinct. Another unexpected arthropod the entomologists found were spitting spiders. These spiders spray venomous silk to capture their prey.

No Cause for Alarm

While the number of bugs and different species of bugs might sound alarming (and could give you that skin crawling feeling), there is actually no cause for concern. A great number of the arthropods the team found were very tiny creatures most humans coexist with their entire lives and never see or really notice. According to the entomologists, the number and variety of bugs were fairly typical for the area the homes sampled were located in.

If you have concerns about bugs you’ve noticed in your home, call The Pest Force. We’ve got the expertise and equipment to make any bug problem you’ve got into a distant memory.