Because I get a lot of requests for pest insect pictures, I’ve created a new gallery:
Household Pests
Rather than the untrammeled nature I usually shoot, this collection is a bestiary of roaches, mice, flour beetles, bed bugs, ants, termites, and other creatures that enjoy the great indoors.
Very nice set of images, Alex, though I notice an inordinate fondness for formicids…
Very nice. You should add Cave Crickets, though they aren’t really a pest, more of a cohabitation.
Great shot. My favorite are the House Centipedes, because they look so formidable and gross.
I did not know that mice were actually hexapods… reminds of my calculus teacher’s story of when she put one of those sticky traps in the middle of her basement floor. When she went to check it the next morning, it had vanished, so she spent about an hour looking for some giant animal in her basement before finding out her daughter had stepped in it, gone back up to her room with it stuck to her foot, and had gotten it all over her bed and herself.
Household pests? Surely, that should include some pictures of siblings and in-laws…
What about some pictures of non-pests that, nonetheless, commonly occur in houses? I spent years trying to figure out what carpet beetles were before I finally found a picture of one online.
we keep finding a black insect on our cream carpet. It is very small, like half a grain of ricesize, having a very pointed nose, black in colour with a hard outer skin. when you pick it up it plays dead let it rest in your hand for a while then off it goes. we have today removed the carepet giving it a really good vacum clean the a vac’s shampoo hoping to rid us of it. Do you know A, what it is. B how best to get rid of it/ Thanks Norman
Hard to say without seeing a specimen, but it’s likely you’ve got a Carpet Beetle (how’s that for an apt name!), family Dermestidae. Their larvae eat all sorts of detritus, so they can be difficult to remove. A good cleaning will certainly help.