Getting Rid of Centipedes: How to Kill Centipedes

Centipedes are disgusting creepy crawlers that will spook your children and predate on your garden while also depriving it of beneficial insects. If you want to know how to get rid of centipedes, you’ll need to know where they live, what they eat, and how to kill them.

Centipede Habits

Centipedes are nocturnal, and they love to live in tiny crevices in your house and yard. At night, centipedes leave their burrows to hunt for prey. When they see the light, centipedes run for cover. This means that you probably won’t see any centipedes during the day.

It also makes hunting centipedes very difficult. One of the most significant challenges with how to get rid of house centipedes is that you can’t see them effectively.

The most common house-dwelling centipede is the scutigera coleoptrata. You’ve probably seen these vermin skittering away from you after you turn the light on to use the bathroom late at night.

Remember that centipedes have legs that stick out to their sides. If you see a crawly creature with legs that are underneath its body, it is a millipede.

Centipedes also enjoy areas that are damp. This means that they congregate in areas under sinks and around bathrooms.

Centipede Diet

Centipedes love to munch on common insects like:

• Bees
• Termites
• Wasps
• Ants
• Roaches
• Caterpillars
• Flies
• Spiders
• Katydids

While it might be possible to create a baited trap using these insects, for the most part, you will have better results when you use a human made bait trap.

If you want to get rid of centipedes, make sure that none of these insects are crawling or buzzing around your house. Similarly, don’t expect centipedes to be effective at controlling the populations of these insects — they don’t eat very much.

How to Get Rid of House Centipedes

If you want to have a centipede-free house, you’ll need an effective centipede killer. Most of the time, this means that you’ll need house centipede traps.

Centipede traps are typically pesticides that have a sticky mat and a small piece of bait. The centipedes will detect the bait by smell, wander over to it, and then get stuck on the mat. Then, the pesticides on the mat will poison them, and the centipede will die.

Other centipede traps are poisoned bait pellets that do not have a sticky mat. For these traps, the centipede will smell the bait, eat it, then crawl away to die later. These traps have the unfortunate side effect of leaving dead centipedes lying around your house.

You can also kill centipedes, which you find out in the open by smashing them with a boot or spraying them with bug spray.

Be aware that centipedes are very sensitive to changes in the level of light, so you should take care to avoid casting a shadow over the centipede before you strike.

Windex and liquid soaps are also effective anti-centipede weapons, should you get the opportunity to spray them.

Why Can’t I Let My Pets Kill The Centipedes?

What you should not do to get rid of house centipedes is to let your cat or dog hunt them for food. While cats may sometimes paw centipedes to death without subsequently eating them, it’s important to remember that centipedes have the ability to bite.

Centipedes also have a mild poison that they can use against your pets. While the poison won’t kill your pets, it’s probably better not to expose them in the first place.

You may also find that if you let your pets chase the centipedes that there are centipede legs scattered around your house. These will be a chore to clean up, but they aren’t evidence of an epic battle: centipedes sever their limbs when they are under attack to confuse predators.

How To Kill Centipedes

Sticky bait traps aren’t the only way to kill centipedes, however. You may find that getting rid of centipedes is easier when you deny them areas to use as a habitat.

This means that how to get rid of centipedes may not require killing any centipedes at all.

If you seal up cracks in the tiling of your bathroom and under your sink where centipedes may try to retreat to during the day, you’ll prevent them from accessing food and moisture in open areas of your house. Then, they’ll dry out and die, or seek moisture elsewhere.

If all else fails, you can try spraying pesticides into these crevices. However, it is unlikely that the centipedes will be residing within the cracks at the time of your spraying, so they may not die.

Use a foaming pesticide mixed with an epoxy to seal up cracks and poison the centipedes which draw near to it — but remember to keep your pets and children far away from it.