Let’s look at four bugs that look like chia seeds, how harmful they are, how to get rid of them, and more.
Who doesn’t love chia seeds, the superfood for a healthy life? But if you suddenly find your chia seeds crawling around, that’s just too much health, isn’t it?
Bugs that look like chia seeds can pose a serious health hazard. Firstly, if they get into your chia seed container, you may end up eating some of them, which is gross (and possibly unhealthy).
Secondly, they might be carrying some disease or else destroying your clothes and soft furnishings by chewing through them. They may even be infecting your stored food, triggering allergic reactions, and doing a lot more harm!
Well, let me not stoke your fears even further. Let’s learn more about some of these bugs.
House mites and Flour mites
First up on our list is a very common pest – the house mite.
House mites can be extremely hard to detect, thanks to their small size. Quite often, these bugs go unnoticed until they’ve grown into a full-blown infestation.
Two of the most common types of mites that resemble chia seeds are house mites and flour mites. House mites (also known as dust mites) usually feed on dead skin cells.
Flour mites, on the other hand, are pantry bugs that feed on dry cereals and other foods. If you find mites in your chia seeds, they are likely to be flour mites.
Do they bite?
House mites don’t bite, but you might get an allergic reaction to them, causing itchy and red-looking rashes.
Flour mites can bite. Their bite causes Baker’s itch, an allergic reaction commonly seen in bakers who often deal in flour.
Can they spread disease?
These mites aren’t known to spread any diseases, but they can trigger asthma and allergic reactions.
Are they harmful to humans or pets?
These mites aren’t directly harmful to humans or pets, but flour mites can render both human and pet food unfit for consumption.
Can they get in the house?
House mites are extremely common house pests, and our homes are their natural habitats. Flour mites can easily get carried indoors when you take home an infested package of food.
How to get rid of them?
To get rid of house mites, you need to clean and vacuum your home thoroughly. Wash your clothes, pillow covers, blankets, and sheets in hot water to kill the bugs.
As for the flour mites, you should keep your pantry clean and store food in airtight containers to deny them a food source.
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Where do they lay eggs?
House mites lay eggs on places like beds and sofas, while flour mites lay them on the surface of the food they have infested.
What are they attracted to?
Dark and humid pantries attract flour mites. House mites are attracted to items and furniture that have dead skin cells on them.
Weevils
Weevils thrive on a variety of foodstuffs (especially grains and cereals). These bugs are extremely common in granaries and pantries, and they can also mingle with your chia seeds.
These insects are easily identifiable by their long, elongated snouts, which can be up to a third of the length of their body.
There are different species of weevils, named after their feeding habits or habitat preferences, such as granary weevils, rice weevils, bean weevils, etc.
Do they bite?
No, weevils do not bite. They only eat grains and cereals; they have no interest in sucking human blood.
Can they spread disease?
Weevils don’t vector any disease, but they can contaminate your food. Even eating one or two of them does not cause much harm to you.
Are they harmful to humans or pets?
These bugs aren’t harmful to humans and pets. As mentioned earlier, they don’t like to feed on anything like human or pet skin.
Can they get in the house?
Weevils usually enter homes via infested food and grains.
How to get rid of them?
Use a vacuum cleaner to get rid of these bugs, their larvae, and eggs. You can apply a disinfectant spray and white vinegar on furniture or bedding.
Make sure to thoroughly clean containers of food that had a weevil infestation. Avoid using any chemical treatments – you could end up contaminating your food. You can also call a local professional pest control company.
Where do they lay eggs?
Weevils lay eggs within the food they are infesting, which is why they often hatch inside sealed grain packets and infest the grains.
What are they attracted to?
Damp areas with suitable food sources attract weevils. They love munching on starchy foods and grains like rice, pasta, cereals, and flour.
Booklice
Unlike most lice species, booklice aren’t parasites. As their name suggests, they primarily infest books, especially old and damp ones.
They are relatively harmless bugs that simply feed on the binding glue and the mildew that grows on paper. A large presence of booklice can be annoying, and some subspecies of this bug can infest food items.
Do they bite?
Booklice get a bad rap from their hair-infesting cousins, but these poor bugs don’t bite you.
Can they spread disease?
No, these bugs don’t spread any diseases harmful to us. At worst, they can contaminate your food.
Are they harmful to humans or pets?
Booklice are mostly harmless, but they may appear harmful if they collect in large numbers.
Can they get in the house?
Yes, booklice can hitch a ride on old books, furniture, or other items and enter a new home.
How to get rid of them?
Clean out any mold, mildew infected books, window sills, etc., in your house, which will finish off their food source. Since these bugs love humidity, use a dehumidifier and reduce humidity levels below 50%. Let in ample sunshine to dry up any excess humidity.
Where do they lay eggs?
Booklice tend to lay eggs in moist and dark places, usually near a food source.
What are they attracted to?
These pests are attracted to dark and moist areas with stored food or mildew to feed on.
Shiny Spider Beetle
Thanks to its shiny and globular abdomen, a spider beetle looks very much like a chia seed. Even the color is similar, ranging from reddish brown to black.
The shiny spider beetle is relatively more reddish than the other spider beetle species and grows up to 1.5 to 3.5 inches in their adult life stages.
This bug feeds on an impressively diverse range of foods, including natural fibers like textile fabrics and silk, grains, fish meal, bread, flour, dried vegetables, old wood, etc.
When infesting a home in large numbers, they can be a huge menace.
Do they bite?
Spider beetles do not bite. They can harm a lot of things in your house because of their diverse range of food sources.
Can they spread disease?
While spider beetles don’t spread diseases directly, they can contaminate food and make it unfit for your consumption.
Are they harmful to humans or pets?
No, these bugs don’t harm humans or pets.
Can they get in the house?
Yes, spider beetles can hole up in dark and secluded places like attics and cracks in the wall.
How to get rid of them?
Throw away food infested by spider beetles, clean your home, and keep the rooms well-ventilated. Use airtight containers to store your food.
Where do they lay eggs?
Spider beetles lay eggs in food containers or on plant leaves.
What are they attracted to?
Shiny spider beetles are attracted to dark and damp places with a suitable food source, especially organic matter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What bug looks like flax seed?
The adult bed bug closely resembles a flax seed, with a flat and oval body. This bug is usually dark brown but has a somewhat transparent body during the younger life stages. Bed bug bites cause itchy welts on the skin. They can bite you on any part of your body, unlike fleas.
What bug looks like a white sesame seed?
Various bugs, such as bed bugs, deer ticks, rice weevils, and aphids, resemble sesame seeds. If the bug is white, it’s most likely an aphid.
However, broken segments of a tapeworm’s body might also look like a sesame seed. If you find something like this in your house, get yourself and your pet checked for tapeworm immediately.
What can be mistaken for springtails?
Fleas are often mistaken for springtails as they look quite similar. Moreover, springtails can jump far and wide, just like fleas, so the distinction is even harder.
However, remember that fleas are parasites that can cause severe illnesses in your pets, while springtails are relatively harmless. If the bug is on your pet and doesn’t jump when disturbed, it’s more likely a flea than a springtail.
Do dead bed bugs look like seeds?
Yes, dead bed bugs look like flax or apple seeds. If you find several such dead bugs in your bed, you likely have a bed bug infestation. While you can get rid of them yourself, you might need a pest control company if the infestation is severe.
Wrapping up
Besides the bugs discussed above, the seed-like pests in your home might also be carpet beetles, black citrus aphids, or black peach aphids.
Always look out for bugs that look like seeds on plants because those might be aphids or other harmful pests that can potentially kill the plant.
If your home is prone to bug infestations, it’s a good idea to keep a spray bottle with insecticidal soap handy. Soap solution typically works on most bugs.
Thank you for reading, and we hope you were able to identify that bug in your house!
25 Comments. Leave new
Hi Theresa:
Ripe impatiens seed pods explode rather violently, on their own or when they are touched. The green curly thing is what’s left behind. Regards. K
Wow, thanks, Karl! I’m new to the whole gardening thing (so I’m new to all sorts of bugs and crawlies, too) I’d swear it pulled back, but hey – a startle is a startle… Then the part left looked like a worm to me… Boy am I embarrassed! I sure appreciate that readers in-the-know are so helpful!
Thanks, again & thanks to you, too Bugman!
It looks like a Beggar’s Tick (or Beggartick) in the genus Bidens. It could be the Common Beggar’s Tick (B. frondosa), but it is hard to tell from the seed alone and there are several species in the genus represented in Ontario. They are in the Aster family (Asteraceae) and most have non-showy yellow flowers. Here on the prairies most hikes end with a picking session to get these little guys out of my socks. K
Hello!
It seems it looks like Black Seeds to me.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Vslle2dNRAc/SoTp-fhvMdI/AAAAAAAAALw/InK1SMcnnNk/s400/JINTAN_HITAM_2.jpg
or
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_enGFCB_5KIw/TLaBZEWf00I/AAAAAAAABiU/-LzvY69ZXms/s1600/black+seed.png
I’ve seen this one before, and I am sorry to report that I can confirm WTB’s analysis that you have a rodent. This looks exactly like nyger (thistle) seed, that a mouse might collect. We’ve had these climb into drawers before and store seed meant for finch feeders. Look up and down the street for bird feeders, this could have come from some distance away. You can get yourself a trap (a humane or live trap if that suits you better) to verify, and put see if you can catch the little bugger. Do it quickly, they can spread disease near your food and utensils. I would actually recommend an exterminator. You probably have many more that you don’t know about. After we started looking behind appliances and under heavy items, we found – well – a lot. And we just had no idea they were there. Sorry.
Thanks for the comment. Your first hand experience in the matter is greatly appreciated.
looks kind of like wild rice grains
Weird… I live in west palm beach, florida and found the same thing in my workshop & was pretty grossed out myself. At first I thought it was some kind of rice but then I wasn’t so sure. Needless to say still very grossed out about it & got rid of it as quickly as possilble. This was about a month ago & now I have this nasty black bug problem. Finding them everywhere especially in my dogs food. Not sure if they are connected but the only thing I could come up with. I’m going to get an air tight container for my dogs food since the last one I had cracked & I didn’t seem to have this problem when I had the food in the air tight container. If anyone finds out what these bugs are & how to get rid of them please let me know. Thanks atvmudman@yahoo.com
The beetles in your dog’s food may be any number of species that we collectively call Pantry Beetles.
My dog regularly got similar seeds tangled in her fur, while walking (in Central Virginia).
Bugs aren’t the only living things that like to hitch a ride on passers-by!
Here is probably the only funny story about Bidens on earth. In the early 90’s I took a Wetland Science class at UCD taught by Eliška Rejmánková. We often had field trips and they started early in the morning. On the trip to Grass Lake, (which is a fascinating sphagnum moss bog in the Sierra Nevadas!!!) I was picking Bidens out of my thermals and said to my field trip partner, “I have Bidens on my thermals.” “YOU HAVE MAGGOTS ON YOUR THERMALS???” he shouted, and everyone in our 8 person van was wide awake. “Bidens! I said Bidens!” I replied, and he settled down and went back to sleep. Then our TA chuckled and told us about someone who picked up a Bot Fly maggot while in Belize. On his head. Ewwwwww. Scientists are a lot braver than most people realize, you know.
OK, our first impression was that this was just another incident of phishing or spam as is the case with over 50% of the comments we receive despite the spam filters we have. That was because we focused on the capital letters in your comment and then we noticed the word Bidens which we thought was a reference to our vice president and his family members. A closer read prompted us to research the scientific name for Beggar’s Ticks which is Bidens frondosa, something we discovered on the USDA website. Thanks for providing your amusing anecdote.
Lol! Yes, I noticed that commonality when I was making sure all the caps were there, too. Because it was a wetlands plants class, we referred to all plants by their scientific, botanical or Latin names, whichever you prefer. And to this day, I remember most marsh plants with a Czech accent, because that’s how I learned them, lol. Like not Scirpus cernuus (aka Low Bulrush or the very much cuter and more descriptive name Fiber Optic Grass) becomes Skeer-poos sair-NOO-us. Eliška is a great teacher- to make a marsh interesting, you must be! Of course, the fact that our TA (we’ll call her “Jane”) had ended up dunked in her chest waders the year before at the Cosumnes refuge and was therefore ultra- extra- mega- careful to NOT let it happen again, also enlivened the proceedings…
Because of the Sphagnum moss, Grass Lake seems like you are walking across a meadow, but if you stand in one place , you will start to see a puddle forming around your feet, because you are actually standing on a huge, matted web. Kind of like the fiberfill mats used for quilting and upholstery, but bigger. It’s almost solid at the edge of the lake, thinning to open water in the middle. The thing to be careful of is going too near the center of the lake, because if you overcome the buoyancy of the moss, it will fold down like the trap door in the castle, and you drop into the water like they dropped into the watery dungeon. Not a problem individually, but we were all Pavlovian trained to scurry to see whatever the TA or Professor was talking about. Well, “Jane” said, “Oh, I found a…” and we were already in motion, like magnetized ball bearings when the magnet gets turned on. She got a horrified look on her face and in a loud, commanding voice said, “FREEZE! Everybody stop immediately!” We screeched to a halt, and looked from one to another trying to figure out what was going on, because of course, as newbies, we immediately forgot the problem of the thinning profile towards the center, where coincidentally, “Jane” was located, but she, of course, had not. I saw a Volvox that day, after hearing about them in biology since grade school. I’ll never forget it. Lol, yeah, I’m REALLY nerdy, hehehe.
Scirpus cernuus picture: http://bassins-de-jardins.wifeo.com/images/s/sci/scirpus-cernuus.jpg
Volvox picture with nice description: https://www.biomedia.cellbiology.ubc.ca/cellbiol/user/scripts/qry_media_id.php?media_id=2891
BTW, I found some enoooormous grubs in the bunny poo, and thanks to you, I didn’t freak out, lol!
Patti
Feel free to provide “nerdy” comments to any of our postings.
I found the same on a dresser the color is not as dark but very close. I notice some were lighter so I picked it up an when applied pressure to see how hard they were it actually had fluids came out almost looking sorta like a maggot, but one thing for sure these are not seeds but more like some sort of living creature. If someone could instruct me as to how to post a picture I will attach to this message. This is kinda embarrassing because my father was a very well known entomologist however he passed 2 years ago My go to man would have loved this challenge, but I am sure he would know at first glance what they are. Dr. James R. Copped get was my father,
Send your images of “Mystery Things” using the Ask What’s That Bug? link on our website and we will try our best to post it before we leave town tomorrow.
Yep, found a bunch of these in my shower the other day (Yikes!!!) and yes, when you squeeze them there is some kind of embryo thingy in them. Yuck. Not seeds, I have no idea what they are, my house is super clean. There is a cat door maybe 5 feet from that bathroom, don’t know if the cat drug something in or what but they were only in the shower and there must have been a hundred in there.
Did a little more research, seems it is the Hessian fly in it’s “Flaxseed stage”. Still gross and I have no idea why they would be in my shower but there you have it.
We are providing a link to the Kansas State University site page on the Hessian Fly or Barley Midge which states: “Hessian flies overwinter as full-grown larvae or maggots inside protective cases called flaxseed because of their resemblance to real flax seeds.” The site explains the origin of the common name: “Though a native of Asia it was transported into Europe and later into North America, supposedly in the straw bedding of Hessian troops during the American Revolution (1775–83).” We do not believe the objects in the images of our posting are Hessian Fly larvae, but we cannot weigh in on what you have found.
Something eats thru a heavy plastic food storage bag and eats my granola bar stash that I keep in my nightstand. It does leave little black seeds it when I smashed it it broke in two
Found the same things in my kitchen drawer. Lighter color, but they attached themselves to the utensils in small groups. There were many more just laying in in the drawer, not moving. Gonna save some to see what, if anything, hatches. They are smaller than grains of rice, and maybe the layer of these ‘eggs’ left some kind of residue on the utensils as well, as I noticed they, too, had some kind of ‘ickiness’ feel to them.
I believe they are moths. Pantry moths start out like that. They are also are called Indian meal moth- I had them too it is gross. They are attracted to flour, rice, seeds, dog food.
I’m shocked! I thought these green things were leaf and stalk eating bugs on my impatiens. I have the most beautiful bed of impatiens you’ve ever seen! This is my first time with growing flowers! After having seen these things that I thought were bugs I’m delighted to discover that are seed pods! Thanks!
I used to love these as a kid
But how do they work so fast? I mean how freaking big to these things have to be to collect a ton in someone’s shower super fast and theyare big. Ive seen a few and ive concluded i have morgellons which seems like bugs or parasites and also attracts all species. Any given hour, i can find a real walking bug with in a few feet from me. U name it. Spiders, silver fish, pill bugs galore, lacewigs, spring tail and the black tick spider big botty bugs fall off me occasionally.. We Clean an vaccum like crazy, get exterminators and do it ourself. Doest matter. They say a body with moregellons is basically a rotten log that smells dead already and some cellouse Type matter makes the fibers which attracts the rest of bugs like moths and i think termites because floors often feel weak under me… Anyway, mayne someone around u all has morgellons? Or moregellons is a real bug afterall. I use to suspect a bug that turns to liquid when threatened and there is some kind of bettle that does that. My husband often says “wth are all these dead beatles?” but i don’t see because i don’t want to get set off into the obsession of “what is it.. Need to fins and eradicate it” again. I accepted… Like a dr once told me… We are organism living with organisms so we are gonna share everything, basically. We have billions of bugs on us and parasites in us always anyway. So some got a lil bigger, i suppose. Was bound too.