Are common house centipedes dangerous?

House centipedes during summer?

• O.k, last summer I used to see a few centipedes in my apartment through out the whole summer. Then winter hit and I never saw them for like six months. Well it just turned spring and I saw a baby house centipede on the wall last week. And yesterday I was sitting at my computer and I see a 2 inch long centipede crawl up the wall behind my computer desk and flip out, because these are like the only insects I don't like. I live in a two story apartment and I leave the air on about 68-72 degrees farenheight. It's pretty dry in my house except for the bathroom of course. But I've only seen one in the bathtub the whole time I have lived here. I usually see them on lower parts of my living room, such as on the lower part of the wall or running across the floor. Where could they be getting in from? Could they be sneaking in from my air vents? Since I live in a apartment I can't just go around spraying the whole building with stuff. What could I do to just keep them out of my apartment? Could they be coming in from the door because there is about a 1 inch crack under the door that leads out to the lobby. And the building is pretty old too but remodeled. Please help!

• Answer:

  I'm very interested in this because I recently moved from the far north to Bug City, FL.. In a year and a half I've had one Giant Red Headed Centipede, and *four* scorpions. The centipede was nearly dead from starvation. One scorpion was already caught in a spider web, probably near dead too, and trying to catch the spider. I have yet to see one of these house centipedes and I am *NOT* looking forward to it. (The web-building spiders I let live because they don't travel around, and snag gnats and such.) Can I guess that you moved in -during- the summer? There's a *awesome* page at wikipedia that explains that they're purely insectivores, that they spend all summer -outside- and come inside during -spring- and fall. The page describes that they're attracted to cooler damper environments. I'd guess that they're mostly in the lower part of the house because cool/damp air is denser and sinks lower. I found an older Answer that had two ideas that I was already thinking about. First is to weatherstrip everything as tightly as possible. The 1" space under that door is *way* out of bounds -- heck a -rat- can fit through that space! Check all other points of entry such as wiring/plumbing/window frames. I'd half-guess that roof vents are not much of an entry point, because they have to get up to the roof first, and that's not a 'cool damp' environment. Second is glue traps. Probably very effective and I'm going to put some around the doors here to snag the occasional rogue Palmetto Monster and scorpion. Dehumidifier might help some, but that's a ton of electri$ity. Talk with the neighbors, because I rather doubt that you're alone with the problem. Perhaps you can mount a campaign to 'de-habitat' the -outdoors- areas, to discourage them from being around the neighborhood at all.