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Sticker of Arizona house centipede
Bug card No. 0144 of 4,939

Arizona house centipede

Scutigera linceci
Name means: “named after Dr. Gideon Lincecum, a nature explorer”
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsCentipedes and millipedesHouses and farmsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The Arizona house centipede is a speedy centipede with lots of long, thin legs. Outdoors it hides under stones and in hollow logs, but it often wanders into people's houses too. It is a smaller cousin of the common house centipede.

Fun fact: this one is not an insect. Insects have six legs, and this cousin has many, many more.
Lives in
Southern United States and Central America, under stones, in logs and in houses
Length
3.8 cm (1.5 in)
Top speed
about 1.7 km/h (1.1 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It hunts small insects and other little creatures, like other centipedes.
For real!Photo of Arizona house centipede
Picture by (c) Sue Carnahan, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Arizona house centipede about 3.8 cm long (1.5 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
as long as 6 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 2.1 seconds

How big is Arizona house centipede compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It grows to only about 4 centimetres long, much smaller than the common house centipede.

2

Scientists first named it Cermatia linceci before it got the name it has today.

3

Its name honours Gideon Lincecum, a doctor who loved studying nature.

4

You can tell it apart from the common house centipede by the shape of its head and its colours.

you asked

Most asked questions about Arizona house centipede

?How big is the Arizona house centipede?

It grows to about 3.8 centimetres long.

?Why is it in my house?

In the wild it lives under stones and logs, but it often wanders into houses.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Scutigera linceci
Group
Centipedes and millipedes
Family
Scutigeridae
Classification
Chilopoda > Scutigeromorpha > Scutigeridae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Scutigera linceci (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by (c) Sue Carnahan, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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More from the same group: Centipedes and millipedes

Also at home here: Houses and farms

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