Long body. Lots of legs. Crawling across your floor. Centipede or millipede? It’s hard to tell. Centipedes and millipedes look a lot alike and it can be difficult to tell the two apart. While it’s not a necessity you do so before you start calling a professional pest control team to help, it may be beneficial for you to know exactly what you’re dealing with. This guide can help.
Centipedes
Centipedes have fairly long bodies, but they tend to be flat. Attached to their heads, you may see two long antenna. This is how they both feel and smell. Just behind their heads, you may also see two legs that are venomous. This is how they capture and kill prey. Each trunk segment has a single pair of legs. They are very fast runners, and while you won’t be able to tell this from the outside usually, they are primarily carnivores.
Millipedes
Millipedes look very similar, but they’re nowhere near as aggressive. They feed on any decaying organic matter they can find, and you might see them eating roots and leaves. Their antennae are very short, and they usually have two pair of legs for each of their body segments. They don’t move quickly. In fact, they’re fairly slow walkers. They also don’t bite in the same way that centipedes might. While a centipede might look a bit flat, a millipede looks rounded. They tend to spend their entire lives in moist, damp places, though you may find them in the basement in the cooler months of the year.
Whether it’s a centipede, a millipede, or something completely different, we can help. Slug-A-Bug is the Brevard County pest control service to call. We’ll help you get rid of the problem immediately and keep it from coming back in the future.