This insect will warn you about something wrong at your house! Silverfish are insects that will sneak into your house if it’s in conditions like humidity and darkness.
So, you’d better watch out if you see them around your house because it will mean there is an excess of humidity in your house or even other plagues.
As it happens with mosquitoes, we want to get rid of them and there are some tips to prevent these damages. Let’s see what these insects are and what we can do if we ever find them in our houses.
Silverfish
Silverfish are small soft insects with no wings and with flat bodies. As it’s mentioned on their name, Silverfish are shiny, silver and long, similar to a moving small fish. They look even weirder because in the back of their bodies they have three long and thin antennas.
Okay, not every species can be beautiful, but this insect can be repulsive for many people even though they aren’t a direct threat to us. However, they do something bad that indirectly affects us.
Issues with these insects
Silverfish don’t affect our health, don’t bite and don’t cause any physical harm, but what they do is cause material damages. They need humid and dark places to survive, so if they find objects with these features, they will eat them and leave them useless.
Something you should take into account is the fact that if there’s one of these insects, it’s possible others might be around your house too, for example mites. This is why Silverfish presence is a sign for you to check the cleaning and humidity of your house.
Where are Silverfish’s favorite places?
These insects tend to live outdoors, under the rocks, the trees’ crust or even animals’ nests, but if they find accurate conditions in your house for them… they will go in.
The most common places of houses to find these insects are: sinks, bathtubs, and, as we mentioned before, dark and humid places. So, check from time to time these places in case you find one.
Silverfish’s diet
One of the striking things about these insects is their diet, they can eat a huge range of material and they aren’t common ones.
They eat things like dry food (flour, sugar, cereal, etc) and inedible objects (paper, cotton, linen, leather, etc). If you are keeping old books, you’d better go check them!
Finding these insects
They are so difficult to see, even though they move at night. So, if you find holes by surprise on your clothes or material damages as we have explained, it could mean you have new guests in your house (not the ones that you would like).
What should you do?
You don’t need to panic if you find Silverfish in your house, but it’s recommended to act as soon as possible. So, you should follow these tips for this situation:
- Keep your house dry and well-ventilated to avoid humid places.
- Sealing cracks and crevices because they can enter from these openings.
- Frequently clean places where they could be, even though there are no signs of them.
- Order and get rid of materials that could feed them, like the ones we mentioned before.
- Residual insecticides.
Learning how to deal with insects is part of everyday life.
At some point, everybody finds insects in their houses, it doesn’t mean they are dirty, it is just those spots that we tend to forget when we clean or that we don’t clean much the ones that are the perfect places for insects, in this case for Silverfish. Have you ever found Silverfish in your house?
