Every Animal Secretly Living in Your House, Explained

What animals are secretly living in your house? You see no bugs, and then a fruit fly lands on your glass. That fly is the one guest you notice. Researchers have searched homes room by room for the others. Eight of them show up here, each one closer to you than the last: fruit flies, the big house spider, silverfish, the house centipede, booklice, carpet beetles, dust mites and face mites. People across Britain reported big spiders in a phone app. A team in the Netherlands vacuumed a damp house in 1964 and kept the dust. And at public events, a researcher scraped the folds beside people's noses. So who shares your home, and what do they want? 0:00 A fly on your glass 0:20 Eight guests, room by room 0:39 Fruit flies and the banana 1:38 The spider in the hallway 2:36 Silverfish and your paper 3:39 The centipede by the switch 4:46 A dot on the page 5:51 The lost nail clipping 6:48 What's in your mattress? 7:54 Nose to the mirror 9:02 So, whose house is it? Every study behind this video is listed below. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Fruit flies: "Yeast, not fruit volatiles mediate Drosophila melanogaster attraction, oviposition and development" by Becher, Flick et al. (2012, Functional Ecology). ▸ 50 homes: "Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes" by Bertone, Leong et al. (2016, PeerJ). ▸ Tidy houses: "The habitats humans provide: factors affecting the diversity and composition of arthropods in houses" by Leong, Bertone et al. (2017, Scientific Reports). ▸ House spiders: "Spatiotemporal variation in house spider phenology at a national scale using citizen science" by Hart, Nesbit et al. (2018, Arachnology); the Belgian peak as reported there. ▸ Silverfish: "Cellulose digestion by the silverfish Ctenolepisma lineata" by Lasker, Giese (1956, Journal of Experimental Biology), as reported by Pothula et al. (2019). ▸ Gut bacteria: "The digestive system in Zygentoma as an insect model for high cellulase activity" by Pothula, Shirley et al. (2019, PLoS ONE). ▸ Grey silverfish: "Ctenolepisma longicaudatum Escherich (1905) became a common pest in Europe: case studies from Czechia and the United Kingdom" by Kulma, Bubová et al. (2021, Insects). ▸ Centipedes: "The House Centipede Scutigera coleoptrata (Linnaeus, 1758) in mainland Britain: it's here to stay" by Gregory (2025, Bulletin of the British Myriapod and Isopod Group); prey and range as reported by the University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum ("House centipede") and KAD (Dierplagen Informatie 1-2015). ▸ Book scorpion: "A review and redescription of the cosmopolitan pseudoscorpion Chelifer cancroides (Pseudoscorpiones: Cheliferidae)" by Harvey (2014, Journal of Arachnology); Linnaeus's Fauna Svecica as quoted there. ▸ In Dutch homes: "Pseudoscorpiones" by Hoffer (2010, De Nederlandse biodiversiteit, Naturalis). ▸ Wool: "Studies on the digestion of wool by insects VII. Some features of digestion in three species of dermestid larvae and a comparison with Tineola larvae" by Waterhouse (1952, Australian Journal of Biological Sciences); museum skeletons as reported by Carnegie Magazine, "Sights unseen: bugs at work" (Hannon, 2019). ▸ Mite allergen: "The house-dust mite (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus) and the allergens it produces. Identity with the house-dust allergen" by Voorhorst, Spieksma et al. (1967, Journal of Allergy); first reported in October 1964. ▸ Bottled dust: "House dust mites known to be an allergen source for 50 years: Der p 1 still detectable in the original sample" by Bergmann, Raulf et al. (2014, Allergo Journal International). ▸ Skin flakes: "International consensus (ICON) on: clinical consequences of mite hypersensitivity, a global problem" by Sánchez-Borges et al. (2017, World Allergy Organization Journal). ▸ Mattresses: "Distribution and determinants of house dust mite allergens in Europe: the European Community Respiratory Health Survey II" by Zock, Heinrich et al. (2006, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology). ▸ Face mites: "Ubiquity and diversity of human-associated Demodex mites" by Thoemmes, Fergus et al. (2014, PLoS ONE). ▸ Mite genes: "Human follicular mites: ectoparasites becoming symbionts" by Smith, Manzano-Marín et al. (2022, Molecular Biology and Evolution); night mating as reported by the University of Reading (2022). ———————————————————— PEOPLE, PLACES & ANIMALS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster): lands on your glass and opens the list. ▸ House-dust mite (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus): what the team in the Netherlands looked for in house dust. ▸ Face mite (Demodex): the last guest, met at the bathroom mirror. ———————————————————— 🎨 Animation by Fulcrum ———————————————————— #insects #bugs #dustmites