Spider beetles and bed bugs

When many of us go looking for bed bugs, we find other pests.

A common discovery is the shiny spider beetle (Gibbium aequinoctiale) and closely related species. Spider beetles are often mistaken for bed bugs when people don’t know what they’re looking for because spider beetles look bloated and reddish-brown — like they might have just fed on human blood.

However, as Lou Sorkin’s photos below show, when you compare them side by side, spider beetles bear no real resemblance to bedbugs.  And the good news is that spider beetles don’t feed on humans.

Photo credit:  Cimex & Gibbium by louento.pix (Lou Sorkin), used under an Attribution-No Derivatives Creative Commons license.

(You can click the image above to see other sizes.)

Lou writes,

Cimex & Gibbium

Here are some images of the shiny spider beetle and the common bed bug so you can see that bed bugs look like bed bugs. Lighting and focus was changed in the ones on the left. There are 3 spider beetles in each picture, the rest are bed bugs. The majority of bed bugs are adults, many with legs missing. See the scattered, slender bed bug legs. Thickened legs are on the spider beetles. Basically dorsal and ventral views of bed bugs and lateral views of spider beetle.

We’ve shared another of Lou’s excellent spider beetle shots before, but it makes sense to include it here, as it’s such a great close-up:

Photo credit:  Gibbium spider beetles in food item by louento.pix (Lou Sorkin), used under an Attribution-No Derivatives Creative Commons license.

(You can click the image above to see other sizes.)

Lou writes of this image,

Gibbium spider beetles in food item

NOT a bed bug, but a beetle called Gibbium aequinoctiale. Its common names are hump beetle, shiny brown spider beetle and it’s a scavenger and stored product pest. Most often confused with bed bugs because of its reddish brown color and globular shape causing people to think that it is full of blood — it is not.

Thanks, Lou!

Here’s a Penn State University fact sheet on spider beetles.

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