Over 98 percent of homes contained book lice, 96 percent housed dark-winged fungus gnats, and every home contained cobweb spiders, carpet beetles, gall midge flies and ants.... Every type of room surveyed contained bugs, and only five rooms (four bathrooms and a bedroom) of the 554 studied contained no critters at all....But don't worry. There were very few pests. The entomologist Matt Berton said: "They’re just milling around at the edges of room, eating little bits of hair and dead insects. This isn’t something that should change people’s behavior."
January 19, 2016
The average home has 100 distinct morphospecies of arthropod.
A meticulous study 50 homes within a 30 miles radius of Raleigh, N.C.:
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21 comments:
Sort of sounds like this years GOP Presidential candidate field.
Indoor spiders are your friend. They catch indoor mosquitos.
"Sort of sounds like this years GOP Presidential candidate field."
I agree. The pests are in the (D) field.
This is great news. I am not the only slob with ants in my bathroom.
The only things I try to eradicate are those little ants that invade my kitchen periodically. Solution: Clean counters. :)
Living on the 24th Floor helps buck the trend. You only see stowaways and the very ambitious.
traditionalguy said...
Sort of sounds like this years GOP Presidential candidate field.
At least they aren't crusty old white people like the diverse democrats!!
rhhardin "Indoor spiders are your friend. They catch indoor mosquitos." Fact? I am willing to believe this, even (given my housekeeping habits) eager to do so. But which spiders do this? What about the daddy long legs who guards the back of our toilet tank? A benign domestic presence, surely?
Well, I've been in places where humans still resided, and the roaches had eaten the wall paper up to about 5' high, the carpet padding, the adhesive in all the books bindings and magazines, etc. As I walked around, it sounded like I was walking on Rice Krispies, but that was roaches and roach exoskeletons crunching under my boots. I've also been in places where just a few feet into the residence - yes, still occupied by humans - and every square inch of my exposed skin was black with fleas. Hundreds of black, tiny little jumping, blood-sucking fleas. Completely creeped me out. There were commonly babies and children in places like this.
So, dust mites and such? Background noise.
But no bed bugs were found. So that is a good report.
You got rats on the westside. Bedbugs uptown...
Bugs always win
I saw WaPo's headline via Google News and instantly thought of half a dozen bug phobic friends and family whose days I could ruin by sending it to their inboxes. My inner humanity ultimately prevailed, and I didn't do it.
p.s. They're really called entomophobics, but I think bugphobic rolls off the tongue more nicely.
The larger arthropods also provide entertainment for my cat.
I believe more detail on the rooms that were critterless is warranted. Do these people have cleaning secrets? Special treatments? Severe body odor?
Let's study the clean rooms!!!
This, like restaurant workers messing with food, is best left unreported. Nothing good comes from knowing.
"This isn’t something that will change people’s behavior."
Fixed it for him.
I'm thinking of the 1990 comedy movie Arachnophobia here with John Goodman as the insanely intense, uber-dedicated exterminator..
Wait until the inspectors come to New Orleans and encounter our giant flying cockroaches. When surprised they seem to always fly right for one's mouth....gack!
Funny comment about bathrooms. A cleanliness expert once commented on NPR that bathrooms were the cleanest rooms in the house and that on that basis he would recommend eating in the bathroom, LOL!
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