Types of insects that can live in an apartment, and their photos

Insects live in almost every home. This is a fact: even if the owners of the premises do not see them, this almost always only means that such “roommates” are simply very successfully hiding from the person’s gaze. In some cases, insects in an apartment can be absolutely harmless, but some of their species pose a serious danger not only to food and things, but also to the person himself.

It is also important that many insects that can live in an apartment are absolutely indifferent to its sanitary condition. For example, silverfish (see photo below) may well be found even in an elite apartment with a good repair:

And then the nest of bed bugs is shown - they can multiply well both in dirty shacks and in the most modern and comfortable apartments:

That is why you should not count on the fact that if order is constantly maintained in the apartment, then there will definitely not be insects in it. In some cases, this is practically irrelevant.

Of course, the ubiquitous cockroaches or wood lice in the bathroom are unlikely to start up in an exemplary clean room, but a certain insect fauna will also master it.Therefore, it will be useful for each homeowner to find out what main types of insects are found in apartments, what are their features and how difficult it can be to deal with them. We will talk about this further…

 

All the variety of insects in the apartment

According to the degree of harmfulness and danger, synanthropic insects can be classified into several groups. The first is blood-sucking parasites that pose an immediate danger to humans (and sometimes to domestic animals):

1. Bed bugs - they almost always bite only a person. They do not have wings, they settle in large groups in sofas, under mattresses, under baseboards, in various crevices. Bed bugs bite mainly only at night, and with massive bites they can cause serious allergic reactions, especially in children. Bed bugs almost never bite cats and dogs.
   
2. Fleas - but they are not at all picky in choosing a host. These are very small jumping insects in the apartment, biting mainly during daylight hours. They can parasitize on cats, dogs, domestic rodents, and actively bite humans. In some cases, fleas can be quite difficult to get out of the room. Sometimes they enter the apartment from the basement (basement fleas).
   
   
3. Lice are small white or grayish insects that constantly live in underwear or on the scalp of a person. In an apartment, lice themselves are found in exceptional cases when they accidentally fall from their victim.
   

The second group is pests that spoil food or other property in the apartment. Among them are the following types of insects:

1. Cockroaches are perhaps the most famous and easily recognizable.They settle most often in kitchens, feed on various food waste, and are able to carry various dirt with pathogens on their paws.
2. Pharaoh ants are one of the most difficult apartment insects. Their colonies can be interconnected and cover several apartments at once, in which they arrange their anthills, collecting various food wastes in them.
3. Woodlice, usually settling on the first floors in bathrooms and toilets. Generally speaking, wood lice are not insects (they belong to crustaceans), but they lead about the same lifestyle as cockroaches.
4. Moth is the scourge of fur coats and kitchen cabinets. Her inconspicuous butterflies are very annoying with their fluttering, and the larvae at this time sharpen groceries or make holes in clothes made from natural and semi-synthetic materials.
5. Leather beetles, very small, about the size of a flea. Their larvae can eat a wide variety of organic matter, including even some poisonous substances.
6. Pests of domestic plants - thrips, whiteflies, springtails, mealybugs. If white insects appeared in the apartment in flower pots, then this is most likely one of them.

The photo below shows springtails in a flower pot with soil:

Photo of worms on a houseplant:

They live in apartments and insects that do not cause noticeable harm. For example, these include:

1. Silverfish feeding on bits of paper and organic debris in the dust.
2. Butterflies are small flies whose larvae develop in garbage and sewers. Most often found in bathrooms and toilets.

And further: We catch bedbugs and put deadly experiments on them - this is a must see!

And the last group is insects, with one or another periodicity looking into the apartment, but not living here permanently. These include mosquitoes, flies, stink bugs, lacewings, wood ants, and many others. They cannot be called indoor insects.

Next, we will take a closer look at the representatives of the most harmful insects that are permanent residents of apartments.

 

Cockroaches and the harm they cause

The main danger associated with the presence of cockroaches in the apartment is the spread of pathogens and dirt from the garbage chutes. Constantly moving around the table, food products, dishes, they greatly worsen the sanitary situation in the room.

Imagine: the cockroach first crawled over the rotting waste in the garbage chute, and then made its way into the apartment and ran over the bread left on the kitchen table ...

Cockroaches are perhaps one of the most famous insects living in an apartment, so everyone knows them, as they say, “by sight”. For example, in the photo below - a red cockroach, small, but incredibly easy to adapt to different conditions of existence:

And then in the photo - black cockroaches, which not everyone had to see. They are large - up to 4 cm. So if you meet a large black insect in your apartment that looks like a cockroach, then it is almost certainly Blatta orientalis (as this type of insect is called in Latin):

Cockroaches are especially easy to start up in an apartment that has access to food, a source of water and places to hide.If you diligently maintain cleanliness in the room and destroy the first aliens from your neighbors as quickly as possible, then your apartment may well be the only one without cockroaches, even if they are swarming in all neighboring apartments.

The fight against cockroaches is not difficult, but it requires time and money: cockroaches are destroyed by a variety of insecticidal agents, and special gels and microencapsulated preparations are especially effective in this fight (Get, Lambda Zone, Delta Zone, etc.)

 

Bedbugs in the apartment

Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) are the most annoying blood-sucking insects in the apartment. They attack a person at night, crawling onto the bed and biting any open areas of the body.

During the day, bedbugs hide in furniture, behind skirting boards, in mattresses, household appliances, behind carpets on the walls. Sometimes they are confused with cockroaches, especially young larvae.

The photo shows a bed bug larva:

Due to the fact that bedbugs feed only on human blood, they, unlike cockroaches, cannot be destroyed by various poisoned traps and baits. The most effective way to deal with bedbugs is baiting with insecticidal aerosols and sprays.

 

Ants: the smallest, most difficult to breed

Domestic ants (they are also called pharaoh) are very highly organized insects. In the apartment or outside, they organize a nest in which several females lay their eggs, and workers serve them and store food supplies. Such stocks can rot, and the insects themselves can move along the walls of the house garbage chute and through the products in the kitchen in one day.

And further: Smoke bombs from insects - a quick killer thing ... (the article has more than 10 comments)

The photo below shows these apartment insects that found a treat on the kitchen table:

Due to their ability to organize several communicating nests, ants can capture several apartments and apartment buildings at once. Certain difficulties are associated with this in their breeding: even having destroyed the ants in your apartment, you cannot be sure that in a week they will not begin to colonize it again, coming from their neighbors.

These harmful little insects are removed by the same means and methods as cockroaches. However, it is important to take into account that until the queen of domestic ants is destroyed, the colony will live.

 

Fleas: danger, biology, specifics of the fight

Fleas are another biting parasitic insects in the apartment. Most of the time they spend in shelters near the resting places of pets, often for a long time they are in the fur of cats and dogs. The larvae of these small blood-sucking insects can be found in any place where there are rotting organic remains: in garbage, sewers, animal litter.

The insect on the carpet shown in the photo below is a cat flea (for an uninitiated person, outwardly, it almost does not differ from other types of fleas - dog, rat, human ...):

Adult fleas feed exclusively on the blood of humans and animals. But for their larvae, both food products and excrement of adult fleas or pets are suitable as food.

All the difficulties of fighting fleas are related to the fact that they can be found both in animal hair and anywhere in the room.Of all the insects that live in an apartment, fleas require the most comprehensive approach to breeding: they are first destroyed on animals, then indoors, and finally, the surviving larvae are poisoned.

 

Moth as the main destroyer of food and clothing

Moths are flying insects in the apartment, the butterflies of which are most often seen on the ceiling, windows, inside cabinets. There are many types of them, some of which harm food (food moth), and some - fur and woolen things (clothes moth).

Actually pests are moth larvae. In most cases, its butterflies do not eat at all, but are only engaged in laying eggs. Moth caterpillars can penetrate closed jars, bags and boxes at a young age and then feed on the product in which they find themselves.

Clothes or fur coat moths can damage even semi-synthetic fabrics, but they are not able to eat pure synthetics.

The photo below shows typical apartment pests: barn moth and clothes moth:

 

Mosquitoes in the apartment

Mosquitoes are well-known summer insects that often fly into an apartment. The photo below shows a female mosquito sucking blood and clearly demonstrating why these insects seek to get into our homes:

Mosquitoes do not live permanently in human dwellings, since they need water bodies for reproduction. Nevertheless, they appear in apartments in search of a victim, arriving in the evenings in the light of lamps.

In most cases, it is much easier not to let them into the apartment by hanging a mosquito net on the windows, or scaring them away with special devices (fumigators, ultrasonic repellers), than then to search on the ceiling and walls and destroy them.

 

Woodlice are not exactly insects.

In most cases, wood lice start up only in those apartments where it is constantly damp, for example, water is leaking from pipes. These insects are excellent indicators of various plumbing failures and flange depressurization.

Photo of wood lice:

Sometimes wood lice can also enter the bathroom or toilet through ventilation from the attic or from neighbors. They do not cause much harm, they are content with various garbage in damp places, but they are very unpleasant in appearance. They hatch the same way as cockroaches.

 

Leather beetles

Leather beetles in apartments occasionally spoil clothes and food. They pose a particular danger in that the cereals or other groceries they eat become poisonous to humans. In addition, the larvae of these beetles can spoil expensive furs and knitwear.

These insects are rarely numerous, but can be found almost everywhere: in books, linen, food, garbage. It is quite difficult to remove them, and in most cases the struggle consists in throwing out contaminated products and regular cleaning of shelves and cabinets in the apartment.

In the photo - a bread grinder (aka kozheed), a beetle the size of a flea:

Other indoor insects - butterflies, silverfish, book lice - if they cause harm, it is insignificant and very subtle. Book lice, for example, feed on glue in book bindings.

Insects on domestic plants are also unpleasant pests, which may well lead to their death due to damage to the roots and leaves. Often these are small white insects, inactive and easily destroyed by special insecticides for treating plants. Generally speaking, there are many types of such pests, and mealybugs, springtails and whiteflies are only a very small part of them.

In general, in order to prevent the appearance of almost any insects in the apartment, it is necessary to carefully check all purchased products and house plants, protect animals from flea infestation and control that children do not become infected with lice. And the apartment itself must be carefully cleaned and kept clean, which with a certain reliability will provide protection from the most common pests.

 

How to Make Killer Bait for Household Insects with Get Insecticide

 

5 rules for choosing an insect extermination service