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Pantry Beetles, Grain Weevils, Spider Beetles, Meal Worms and Carpet Beetles

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Household Pests

Tubular, Hairy, spiked, 4?legs w/a pair of horns
Sun, May 31, 2009 at 2:55 PM
Found in the morning on linens as a speck
Curious In Missouri
West Central Missouri

Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 7:00 AM
Dear Bugman, Thank you for your WTB site it is very interesting and informative. I was wondering , I’ve sent in a photo on May 31, 2009 to see about getting the identification of the bug/insect. How do I get your answer ?
I wasn’t for sure if the was a special site to go to or do you send out the info. out in an E-mail ?
Thank You, Curious in Missouri

Dear Susan, AKA Curious in Missouri,
After our previous response that we cannot answer the volume of mail that we receive, and that we were unable to trace your initial inquiry by the name you provided, we checked and saw a letter signed Curious in Missouri. We are posting your images in the hope that one of our readers can assist in this identification, but we ourselves are clueless. It appears to be larval, but if it was a speck, it is entirely possible that it will change form drastically as it grows and matures. We must say that we are impressed that you inspected this speck from your linens using photo-microscopy, and we shudder to think what you might find should you happen to closely study our home and office. Also to further elaborate on your question about our responses, we are now just posting to the website with a courtesy email to the querant. We used to answer more letters via email than we posted, but our tired old computer has gotten very slow, and we cannot take the time to answer letters we do not post. We hope to buy a new computer with our book advance, and then we anticipate greater speed and efficiency with our correspondence.

Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:17 AM
Daniel:
With profusion of body hairs, banded appearance and the pair of spines or ‘horns’ on the hind end, this looks like the larva of some kind of Dermestidae beetle (carpet beetles, larder beetles ,hide beetles , skin beetles, etc.), possibly in the genus Dermestes (e.g., D. lardarius , the common larder beetle) . Since it was described as a speck, it may have been a very young one as you suggest. Regards.
Karl

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