Name That Bug!

July 28, 2015 2:29 PM

What kind of bug is this?

I am pretty sure it's not a bedbug, but I certainly wouldn't mind some reassurance. In the last few weeks I've seen several crawling on my bedroom walls and today I found one on a towel.

posted by anderjen to Science & Nature (8 answers total)

Definitely not a bedbug; looks like it could be some kind of Dermestid beetle, which could mean you've got a dead rat/mouse/animal nearby and they got full and wandered off. Also covers carpet beetles, so you don't want them around anyhow in your home.
Edit: some can be a nasty infestation, but if you identify their foodsource and clean it up / make it hard for them to eat it, they go away. Not harmful to people, but gross to have around.

Further edit: the narrower thorax leads me away from dermestid, so I may be wrong. Another contender is a weevil of some sort, but the head doesn't look right for that.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:34 PM on July 28, 2015

Looks like a Black Vine Weevil.

I've seen those before around.

Where are you located?
posted by christiehawk at 2:56 PM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Those look like weevils to me, too. They may well be eating something in your pantry, but seeing them is not a crisis of bedbug-level proportions.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:00 PM on July 28, 2015

Response by poster: I'm in Minneapolis.
posted by anderjen at 4:00 PM on July 28, 2015

Yea looks weevil -ish to me too. Definitely NOT bed bugs. Check for what they might be eating near your bedroom, and make sure to check your pantry's dry foods containers (pasta, crackers, rice, flour) and wipe down everything.
posted by gemmy at 5:35 PM on July 28, 2015

I thought carpet beetles. But in any case, as noted above, this is a NO PANIC situation.
Just clean your domicile (always a timely idea) and fear not!
posted by hexatron at 6:01 PM on July 28, 2015

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisbug is an invaluable resource for questions like this.
posted by dws at 10:33 PM on July 28, 2015

Response by poster: I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I checked with my brother who does pest control for a living and he replied that it's a ground beetle – a strawberry seed beetle, to be exact. Gross-looking but mostly harmless, I guess, as far as I can tell.

Thank you for the guesses and reassurance!
posted by anderjen at 7:57 PM on July 30, 2015