How To Tell If You Have Bed Bugs or Carpet Beetles

If you’ve found a bug crawling around your bedroom, you might be worried that bed bugs have settled into your home. But you may not need to panic about an infestation just yet – there are actually several other insects that look a lot like bed bugs. Knowing about them can help you determine what type of pest you have and what action you should take next. 

Carpet Beetles or Bed Bugs: Know the Difference

If you spot a tiny bug in your home, it can be difficult to identify what type of insect it is. It’s easy to panic and assume you have bed bugs, which is why it’s important to know how to identify these pests and carpet beetles, which are often confused with each other. These pests can look very similar to each other but exhibit very different behaviors. 

At Florida Pest Control, our bed bug exterminators are committed to helping our Florida customers understand the pest threats they may encounter. To avoid panicking over a could-be bed bug problem, it’s best to learn the differences between carpet beetles and bed bugs.

What Are Carpet Beetles and What Do They Look Like?

In many ways, the carpet beetle resembles the infamous bed bug. Carpet beetles are oval-shaped from above, but the main way in which they differ from bed bugs is in their coloring. Carpet beetles do have brown on their backs, but they look more spotted or striped with white and light-colored patches mixed with brown. An even bigger difference between the two is in the larvae appearance: Bed bug larvae look like little worms, while carpet beetle larvae look like miniature fuzzy caterpillars. 

How Are Carpet Beetles and Bed Bugs Different?

Both carpet beetles and bed bugs can breed fast and are known to remain hidden for a while before making their presence known. They have very different behaviors and habits that make it easy to tell them apart:

1. Carpet beetles feed on fabrics like carpet, wool, and other natural materials. 
2. Bed bugs prefer to feed at night and get their name from their tendency to breed and live in mattresses or in and around beds.
3. Carpet beetles do not feed on blood and thus do not leave the bite marks that bed bugs do.
4. It’s hard to see the signs of carpet beetles, which get inside through openings or spaces in the exterior of your property.

What Do Bed Bugs Look Like?

As adults, these tiny bugs are about the size of an apple seed and have flat, oval bodies with six legs. If they haven’t eaten recently, they range from pale white or yellow to dark brown. After feeding, though, they become a little engorged and turn a reddish color. 

Bed bug larvae are even smaller, roughly the same size as a fleck of pepper. They are long, thin, and white-colored worms at this stage. Their eggs are also pearly-white and roughly the size of the tip of a needle, so they may be hard to see with the naked eye.

Insects That Look Like Bed Bugs

Now that you know what bed bugs look like, let’s take a look at some other insects that closely resemble bed bugs and how you can tell them apart. Some of the bugs that look like bed bugs include:

Carpet Beetles

As their name implies, carpet beetles are frequently found in carpeting or upholstery. They feed on fabric like wool and other natural fibers, which is why they often hide in our bedrooms. Unlike bed bugs, they don’t bite people; however, their larvae are covered in tiny hairs that can cause skin irritation, which many people confuse for bed bug bites. 

Though carpet beetles look very similar to bed bugs, they come in a range of colors and have very short antennae. Their larvae also look quite different since they are fuzzy and resemble caterpillars more than worms.

Ticks

Ticks aren’t actually bugs — they’re in the arachnid family, putting them closer to spiders than bed bugs. That said, they do look pretty similar at first glance, thanks to their small size and flat, wingless bodies. Ticks also feed on human blood and leave behind itchy bite marks the way that bed bugs do. 

One way to tell ticks apart from bed bugs is by counting their legs, as ticks have four pairs instead of three. Additionally, ticks often attach to their hosts for a few hours or days at a time, so you may find them hanging off your body instead of crawling around your home.

Fleas

Pets aren’t the only ones who can get flea bites, and unfortunately, these parasites can be hard to tell apart from bed bugs. Both are very small, reddish-brown, and slightly oval. However, fleas are typically a bit longer and flatter, and they’re even tinier than bed bugs. 

If you can’t tell them apart by glancing at them, you can also try looking at the bites. Bed bug bites often show up in a straight line or a slight zigzag pattern, but flea bites come in clusters situated randomly across the body. Flea bites also become obvious within an hour of the bite, whereas bed bug bites can take days to pop up.

Booklice

Booklice are often found in areas with moisture issues, as they feed on mold and mildew and prefer high humidity. If you come across one inside your home, you might confuse it with a bed bug because of their similar appearance. However, booklice have longer bodies with larger, more pronounced heads and bent antennae. 

Think You Have Bed Bugs? Call in the Pros

Spotting a bed bug infestation isn’t easy. If you can’t tell what type of insect you have based on appearance alone, you can also look for other signs of bed bugs, like dark spots on your sheets or a sweet, musty odor. Or, you can call the experts at Florida Pest Control for a professional inspection. 

When you enlist our help, our licensed pest exterminators will identify the type of bug you are dealing with and apply treatment to ensure the infestation is controlled. Contact us today to set up an inspection!