House centipedes are actually friends! They don’t eat your food, clothes, or house, nor spread disease, but they do eat all the little bugs that do those things.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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I totally believe you!
I do my best not to kill spiders and other friends. I only do it if I cannot transport them to a safer place for some reason or if it’s pure instinct (as in, I saw it unexpectedly and swatted at it without thinking).
Having said that, I totally get that some people have intense fear of these creatures. In this case, cat to the rescue!
Insects terrify the absolute sanity outta me. Then I feel bad about having killed a usually beneficial bug.
Except the spotted lanternflies. Screw them.
That's fantastic, fuck if I ever live near a place where "HOUSE CENTIPEDES" are a thing though
They unfortunately look disgusting as hell though, triggers my disgust response like roaches do.
They're just feral false eyelashes
What a terrible day to be able to read and have a good imagination.
Zoom legs
I can't even come close to a centipede without freaking out
Adding this to the list of insects to scoop up on a sheet of paper and put outside. Assuming I ever see one inside.
Good luck scooping up a motherfucking house centipede. They move at like five billion miles per hour.
Do they bite?
EDIT: Not sure why I didn't just look it up. From wikipedia. Sting-attempts are therefore rare unless the centipede is cornered or aggressively handled. Its small forcipules have difficulty penetrating skin, and even successful stings produce only mild, localized pain and swelling, similar to a bee-sting. Allergic reactions to centipede-stings have been reported, but these are rare; most stings heal quickly and without complication.
By that same chain tho … the cat is actually a friend!
Cat be like:
Years ago my cat was joyfully playing with a house centipede and my boyfriend at the time told me to look, she was doing something cute.
I rolled back in my office chair to turn around and see and in doing so rolled over her centipede, killing it.
And she just looked at me like “papa, why?”
I’m a monster. She’s long dead too and I still feel awful.
House centipede?
We get centipede but not in the house.
Also known as a “Nope”
What other bug has cool matching stripes on all 55 of its flesh-creep-inducing legs? I both like and shiver at them.
Those tiny guys are cute compared to this horror from Hawaii:
(Image from Wikipedia -- article is here)
You gotta make sure to shake out your shoes before putting them on and check your sheets before getting in bed if you live around those guys...
Interesting, I didn't know that Aboriginal Australians ate them.
Just looking at it fills me with horror.
that's an evil land shrimp
That's a definite nope
I'm evacuating the house and burning it down if I ever see that
The Devil's Eyebrow...
but not in the house.
You were saying?
Fuck this whole thread. Triggering the fuck out of my "throw phone at the speed of light" response.
That is enough “work” to earn their keep for the rest of their life right?
That's the face of a killer.
I once woke up in the middle of the night to see my cat straight up jump onto a vertical wall, strike a house centipede, and then eat half of it. I found the other half on the desk in the morning...
Aw, they saved you some!
The M on his head stands for “Murder.”
House centipedes are bros! They hunt and kill roaches.
My cats once got in a fight with a praying mantis in an old townhouse.
I'd seen praying mantisses before but this one was a. in my home and b. large enough to be genuinely a little intimidating. The cats won, but it took a long time because they were being more cautious than usual.
Aww! Praying mantises are totally harmless (to humans) and eat far more annoying bugs. I give the same pass to most spiders (for eating flies and mosquitoes), mud daubers (ironically for eating spiders), and house centipedes (for eating cockroach eggs).
Flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and bitey centipedes can fuck off and die though.
I do the same, but they have to keep themselves away from my cats for it to work properly.
Yeah, our only remaining cat is too old to chase anything anymore, but he definitely killed a few centipedes and cockroaches in his time. Good and bad.
I didn't know we had centipedes that would come inside before living in a flat that was half way in a basement. Also didn't know a colony of silverfish was a thing. Centipedes, who obviously were in for a buffet, were nothing compared to that silvery fishy horror that I discovered rustling under the floor cover of my dog's food bowls at midnight. Didn't live there long after that.
I have one like this, she's having fun. It's to the point where I don't even kill roaches anymore, I just wish them luck and find their corpse in the morning. One time she ripped the tail off a skink, but he got away and hid for like 3 days until I found him and let him outside lol.
savagely cute