Their name suggests that they are a danger to carpets. However, carpet beetles can infest all sorts of animal-based fabric, including silk, leather, wool, fur, felt, skins, and feathers. These materials contain keratin, an animal protein that the larvae love.
Carpet beetle larvae can move from one room to another in search of fabric, meaning that an infestation can spread rapidly throughout your home. One of the most obvious signs of carpet beetles in fabric is the irregular holes and threadbare spots they leave behind. Perhaps you’re wondering, ‘do carpet beetles travel with you?’
This article will answer this question in details. You will also discover what carpet beetles look like, what attracts them into your home, and the most effective way to eliminate and repel them.
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What Are Carpet Beetles?
Carpet beetles are small insects that can invade your home and spread rapidly if left unchecked. Carpet beetle larvae sometimes referred to as woolly bears, are the real threat to your pricey fabrics. They feed on natural fibers in leather, wool rugs, linen, silk, and other natural fabrics. They can also snack on dry dog food and pet hairs if nothing else is available.
Adult carpet beetles usually feed on plants, pollen, and flowers. Indoors, carpet beetles prefer to settle and lay eggs in dry, dark, undisturbed places like under carpet edges and behind furniture. They also enjoy congregating around windows and doorways.
An adult carpet beetle can lay up to 100 eggs which take 10-20 days to hatch. This means that a small carpet beetle infestation will soon become widespread. And unless controlled fast, carpet beetle larvae will wreak havoc on your upholstery, curtains, and clothes.
What Do Carpet Beetles Look Like?
Carpet beetles are small, oval-shaped insects, measuring roughly 2.8-5mm in length. Carpet beetle larvae have banded bodies with short, erect brown bristles. The larvae bodies are stout with tapered ends — you can easily mistake them for small hairy caterpillars.
The larvae eventually develop into round-shaped adults, with three pairs of legs and two short antennae on their heads. Depending on the type of carpet beetles infesting, their patterns can have a combination of orange, yellow, or white colors. Black carpet beetles are all black in color. They are the most common and most destructive of all carpet beetle species.
Where Do Carpet Beetles Come from?
Carpet beetles can infest your home in various ways. For instance, these opportunistic pests can land on your/ dog’s fur while it spends some good time outdoors. Undetected, they’ll hitch a ride on your furry friend into the house. Carpet beetles can also hitch a ride on your shopping, flowers, and already-infested fabrics.
Do Carpet Beetles Travel with You?
There are chances that carpet beetles can travel with you. This usually happens when you move contaminated fabrics from one place to another. However, carpet beetle larvae are likely to travel with you because they spend a lot of time on fabric. These beetles can also travel with you through infested furniture, upholstery, curtains, and rugs. Moving carpet beetles from one place to another is possible via your hair and pantry foods.
Comparably, adult carpet beetles don’t love the texture and fabric environment. Instead, they prefer to stay in the wild, feeding on plants, flowers, and pollen. Besides, humans are highly likely to spot and get rid of adult beetles trying to hitch a ride on you.
What Causes Carpet Beetles?
Carpet beetles generally enter your home via open doors and windows or by crawling through cracks and holes in the wall. They can also be brought in through infested items such as secondhand furniture, rugs, clothes, and plants. Stuffed animals are also a hotbed for carpet beetles.
Pregnant carpet beetles lay their eggs where there is abundant food for the larvae, such as woolen fabric, fur, carpets, rugs, and clothes. They also like places away from direct sunlight, like shady, undisturbed corners. An adult carpet beetle can lay more than a hundred eggs at once. The eggs take about 20 days to hatch into larvae that devour anything containing natural fibers or animal products.
Evidently, it doesn’t take a lot of carpet beetles for an infestation to occur. If left alone, a carpet beetle infestation will easily thrive off of dirty fabrics and unsanitary homes. You want to vacuum your floors, carpets, and rugs regularly to keep carpet beetles away from your home.
Where Do Carpet Beetles Hide?
Carpet beetles are likely to infest any area in your home as long as there are natural fibers and animal matter around. You’re likely to find them in furnishings such as curtains, cushions, and carpets. Pantries are another popular hotspot for carpet beetles, where they thrive by eating spices, flour, dried pasta, and grains.
Other areas where you can find carpet beetles in homes include:
- Animal beds
- Bird nests in chimney
- Potpourri
- Bedding
- Taxidermy
- Pet Biscuits
- Flowers
4 Obvious Signs of a Carpet Beetle Infestation.
Because carpet beetle eggs are pretty small, most homeowners don’t see them. It’s hard to notice or suspect the presence of carpet beetles until after damage to fabric and other items has occurred. Fortunately, experts have identified the most obvious warning signs of a carpet beetle infestation in your home.
- Carpet Beetle Skin
Like most insects, carpet beetles need to shed their skin to grow and mature. They undergo several molting processes, leaving behind empty skin shells that vary in size depending on the molting stage. Shed carpet beetle skin appears somewhat like the skin of nuts or sunflower seeds with a light brown or yellow color. If you come across these dry and flakey empty skin shells (mostly in areas where they feed), that’s a hint that carpet beetles are having a reunion in your house.
- Fecal Droppings
Carpet beetle larvae leave behind fecal dropping while they feed. Their droppings look like tiny pellets, roughly the size of table salt. The color of carpet beetle droppings often varies from black to brown, depending on the color of their last meal. These fecal droppings are typically found in places where carpet beetles feed.
- Eye and Skin Irritation
Carpet beetles and their larvae are not poisonous and don’t bite. However, they can negatively affect your respiratory tract and cause eye and skin irritation. Carpet beetle dermatitis is skin irritation, rashes, and welts caused by these pesky critters. These symptoms usually occur as an allergic reaction to long-term exposure to the hair and hemolymph of the fuzzy larvae. As such, you want to get rid of carpet beetles as soon as you spot them.
Damaged Fabric
When carpet beetles infest your home, the larvae feed on any materials that contain keratin, such as carpets, clothing, felt, silk, leather, feathers, wool, and more. The annoying invaders are notorious for grazing across the top or underside of fabrics, leaving behind irregular patches and fraying. Holes in your clothes, carpets, and linen are another accurate sign of carpet beetle infestation.
How to Prevent Carpet Beetles from Traveling with You?
Perhaps you’re worried about carpet beetles traveling with you? Here are simple and effective steps you can take to stop carpet beetles from traveling with you:
- Before you pack your travel backpack, vacuum and clean your home thoroughly while paying keen attention to rugs and carpets.
- Put all your blankets, bed sheets, pillowcases, clothing, linen, and other fabrics in the washing machine. Wash them with a mild disinfectant detergent. This helps kill the resilient invaders, their larvae, and their eggs.
- Let your fabrics dry out under the sun for 2-5 hours. This helps kill any remaining carpet beetles, larvae, and eggs.
- Spraying your backpack, bag, or container with a disinfectant effectively kills carpet beetles.
How to Keep Carpet Beetles Away from Your Home?
Here are effective ways to prevent carpet beetles from entering your home:
- Vacuum and clean your home thoroughly and regularly while paying keen attention to your rugs and carpets.
- Store all foods in tightly sealed containers
- Use a dehumidifier to bring down the humidity levels
- Use caulking to patch all holes, gaps, and cracks in your walls, doors, and windows
- Install window and door screens to keep bugs away
- Inspect plants, flowers, and used furnishings before introducing them into your home.