If you find a scutigera in your house, do not kill it

It has probably happened to everyone. You are walking through your home and you come upon an unwanted, little guest. Maybe it was a mosquito, a fly, or even a cockroach. However, there is one little guy that we don’t want to immediately greet with the bottom of our shoe: the scutigera, or house centipede.

This arthropod, native to the Mediterranean region, gets around on 15 pairs of legs, qualifying it as a centipede. Due to its creepy appearance, most people try to destroy it on sight, but we are going to explain why you may want to refrain from doing this.

The reason for sparing the scutigera is because it feeds on other insects that tend to invade our homes like mosquitos, bed bugs, and ants. So you may want to resist hurting this particular insect the next it appears in your home. Let’s find out more about this misunderstood predator.

Scutigera: some interesting facts

As we said earlier, the scutigera is part of the centipede family, and its full scientific name is scutigera cleopatra. It has a long, firm body accompanied with a lot of little legs, making it easy to climb walls and reach high places (relative to an insect).

Using its dexterity, the scutigera makes its way into our homes and eventually into our closets and furniture. The scutigera does this because it is  attracted to the comfortable temperature, as it tends to avoid the cold.

But what concerns us the most about the scutigera is its diet, which is the very reason why we shouldn’t kill the centipede. In addition to what we already mentioned, the scutigera is also known to feed on other pests including spiders, silverfish, butterflies, cockroaches, and termites. And luckily, the house centipede is completely harmless to humans.

At any rate, 2 or 3 these insects in your home can turn out to be quite useful. However, always intervene if it appears that they are beginning to colonize in your home!