Scutigera Coleoptrata: In Your Bathroom, On Your T-Shirt

Joy! You can now buy a T-shirt featuring the likeness of everybody's favorite horrific-looking, behind-the-toilet-dwelling, cockroach-eating centipede. Will Bower from the Facebook group House Centipedes Are Your Friends sent a link to these great shirts, available on Etsy (where else?). The centipedes look hardcore, and (as you can tell by looking at the models) simply putting a Scutigera Coleoptrata on your chest is sure to make you appear 10x as hip as normal.

Scutigera Coleoptrata T-shirt
Scutigera Coleoptrata T-shirt, fitted version

Previously:

It's Scutigera Coleoptrata Season! - Boing Boing

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Delightful Creatures • fashion • Happy Mutants

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Jeffrey S.

When I moved in to my house in Minneapolis, my basement had lots of spiders. I didn’t see them but I was always clearing webs with my face.

In the last couple years though I’ve felt nary a web. But instead I have “THOSE BUGS”. I kill em when I can but now I feel a little better knowing that they the ones who took care of my spider problem.

Still, they better watch out…
TheBlessedBlogger

Also known as the House Centipede. We have them all over our house. They’re super fast, big, scary looking and they sting! Gah, I hate these things.
Anonymous

(shudder)
Maggie, you are just mean.
freshacconci

I know they’re (mostly) harmless to us, and are actually beneficial, but even looking at a graphic version of one makes my skin crawl. I can’t imagine ever being able to get over that feeling enough not to kill one on sight, or let my cats go at it, although I have put more than one ‘pede out of its misery when my cats decided that toying with it half-dead was great fun.

On a side note: why do my two female cats take the most pleasure in torturing insects while my male cat just swoops in and devours them?
Anonymous

I let the small ones live, but the big ones are so creepy I kill them out of some primal reaction I don’t try to overcome.
Anonymous

Kill the swifties!
Carrie

I’m no bug ‘phobe but I hate those things. We call them dragons in my house and my husband slays them for me.
>shudder<
ravenword

I always called them East Bugs, after a particularly infested dormitory at my college. We don’t have them in Florida, where I’m from (and where there are some pretty heinous types of other creepy crawlies), and I was horrified when I moved up north and discovered them.
weaponx

Is this a Silverfish?
- Jerril
  
  @weaponx: you may find this informational link helpful.
Talia

Argh no. Evil, wrong and bad.
bartoncasey

The scariest thing about house centipedes is how fast they are. They run at a speed that is *way* out of proportion to a bug their size.

I used to have a homicidal hate on for these guys. I finally decided to capture one, have a good long look at him, and read up on them. An hour later, we’d come to a peace with each other. Once you manage to convince yourself that they’re on _your_ side, they’re not so scary.
jaypee

Argh.. I was actually working on the artwork to make and sell my own shirts featuring ol’ coleoptrata.
Anonymous

Just wanted to point out that these things almost never sting people, and if they do, they are rarely able to penetrate the skin. It’s also not a bite; centipedes have poison pincers. The deadly forty-legged thing and the critters various other people have referred to are NOT Scutigera coleoptrata, but one of the many other kinds of centipede. And living in humid, moist, roach- and bedbug-infested DC has made me sort of treasure these guys. They’re creepy, but they predate pretty much all the bugs that actually carry disease.
cinemajay

This shirt is the opposite of good.
electroblake

Hello there, these are my shirts. They sold out pretty quickly after this post went up, but I have re-listed them. Unfortunately I can’t get Etsy to give the new listing the same URL so the link in the original post doesn’t work. Please go here instead:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33839957

Cheers,
Blake.
midknyte

That graphic might ought to be on the back of the shirt instead of the front
Robert

Yay for Scuttling cleopatras! Yay for mustaches!
Anonymous

Yes, they are creepy (literally). As a Biologist, I assure you of the following:
1. They are not Insects (way more than 6 legs) or “bugs”—but they do each those creatures.
2. They are not associated with disease (are not “vectors”).
3. Whether you like it or not, your home, and YOUR VERY BODY is a habitat for all sorts of living things. And that is not altogether bad. Relax!
Ito Kagehisa

Long ago I had a terrarium that my housemates insisted on populating with anole lizards. I just had plants in it.

Then they caught a house centipede, 2 or 3 inches long, and put that in with the lizards.

The centipede killed the lizards.
smammers

Oh my god, IS THAT WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE? We had some in our old apartment over the summer, and the first time I saw one scuttle across the carpet I screamed, leaped out of my chair, and ran out of the room. When I came back with a big shoe, I couldn’t find it! It was close to the same color as the carpet, and then it ran again when I got close to it. Fucking terrifying how fast those things move. It’s unnatural. My boyfriend made fun of me when he got home, but he didn’t see how huge it was or how it moved. *shudder*

Luckily, we’ve had far fewer bugs since moving to an upstairs apartment. A few spiders, but at least spiders just sit in the corner, mostly.
Anonymous

pet peeve: the specific epithet (the second word in the binomial name) is not capitalized. The generic epithet (first word) always is. Go ahead – call me an overly picky entomologist.
Arsnof

I prefer Coleoptrata-Man’s original costume.
Chris S

Sold out!!

You meddling boingboingers…
Anonymous

In Jamaica they have some that grow to a foot long and run as fast as a mouse. If they sting you it can kill you. They call them forty leggers.
sjfbarnett

When my husband and I moved into our Beaches, Toronto apartment, we discovered these terror-inducing things, but didn’t know what they were. He later had a dream that they were called “Lemonheads”, and the name has stuck ever since.

I could never wear a shirt with this giant, hairy thing on it. Gah {But I do appreciate the graphic design of it}.

I still run away screaming every time I see one. Although I am pleased to now know they eat roaches, which are even more ghastlyâ€¦
dancentury

I get them in September, and smash them with my hands. I’ve gotten past the squeamish phase with them. I do have to check my sneakers and shoes before I put them on, because they do sting as others have said, and I’ve gotten bit a few times. Karma.

My friend used to call them cl*tor*s bugs, but I’m not sure why.
Anonymous

just when i thought i’d never have to look a Towers Bug in the eye again….
Darwindr

I agree with Anonymous entomologist #17 and will throw in a plea to italicize or underline all scientific binomial names.

Yes, I’ve marked too many biology reports.