Earwig from Shower
Rosie found this earwig in the shower on September 17, 2023, and caught it in a piece of toilet paper (that’s the white fibers it is poking its head out of). She wasn’t particularly pleased, but agrees that earwigs are better than, say, cockroaches.
Here’s a full-length photo. This is a European Earwig, Forficula auricularia, which are pretty big at about 3/4 of an inch long. They are big enough that my macro camera can barely fit it fully into the frame at the lowest magnification.
The enormous, toothed forceps at the end of the abdomen mark this as a male. They do in fact try to pinch you with their forceps, but while they are able to hang on pretty well with them, I’ve never had them get me anyplace where they could pinch particularly painfully.
Here is a pair of photos that can be reassembled to show the whole insect at higher magnification, so you can fully appreciate its beauty.
Earwigs are omnivorous detrivores, so they have kind of general-purpose head and mouthparts.
Earwigs have kind of a reputation for being nasty and slimy and dirty, which isn’t really fair because they are no more so than any other insect. They are slippery, but that is more because they are smooth than due to any inherent sliminess. They do smell kind of bad, but that’s because they are spraying a defensive chemical. Kind of oddly, the chemical that they spray apparently doesn’t deter chickens. Sam’s chickens love eating earwigs. They probably think they are amusingly spicy.
While earwigs do get into a lot of things, and can be a nuisance pest in various crops and garden plants, they actually prefer meat when they can get it. They apparently devour huge quantities of things like aphids, and the last time we had a big outbreak of forest tent caterpillars the earwigs were getting into their cocoons and eating their pupae.
We used to have massive outbreaks of earwigs, to the point where every time we picked up something in the yard it would be crawling with earwigs underneath. Some of our yard furniture has metal tube frames, and when we picked one up and shook it, hundreds of earwigs would fall out of the tubes. I think the main thing that makes people think earwigs are gross is the sheer quantity, and the way that they surprise you. But, at any rate, the numbers have tapered off a great deal over the years. These days, we still see them around, but maybe 10 or so at a time, not hundreds.
And when they get into the shower, it is generally ony one at a time.
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Thanks for this post. Made me think about where the name came from.
Surprised to learn it likely comes from the shape of their wings, nothing to do with our ears.
I wonder what it would take to convince one to fly. A flying earwig might strike fear in the best of us!
I’ve always found earwigs to be hideous and suspected they were planning some villainy with those pincers.
As for convincing them to fly, well, shooting them out of cannon might help.
When you uncovered nests of them, were the chickens ever present for a feeding frenzy?