CARPET BEETLES 



By E. A. Back, principal entomologist, Division of Insects Effecting Man and 

 Animals, Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine 



Carpet beetles, sometimes called "buffalo moths", can cause great 

 damage to house furnishings and clothing containing wool (fig. 1), 

 hair, bristles (fig. 2), fur, feathers, and other animal substances. 

 They can also subsist upon mealy or floury material. They do not 

 normally eat wood and never weaken timbers. They do not spin 

 webbing on the article attacked, as do some clothes moths. Because 

 of their habit of entering wall spaces, where they may remain 

 quietly for some time out of reach of the ordinary house-cleaning 

 operations, they are even more difficult to control than clothes moths 

 in many houses. 



Figure 1. — Edge of a wool carpet being- eaten by larvae of the carpet beetle. Xote that 

 the larvae are eating only the woolen pile, leaving untouched the vegetable fibers of 

 the warp. 



Kinds of Carpet Beetles 



Four species of carpet beetles are commonly found in dwellings. 

 They are the common carpet beetle (Anthrenus scrophulariae L.), 

 the furniture carpet beetle (A. vorax Waterh.), the varied carpet, 

 beetle (A. verbasci L.), and the black carpet beetle (Attagenus piceus 

 Oliv.). None of these, in any stage of growth, has a body length 

 greater than about three-sixteenths to one-fourth of an inch, with 

 the exception of very large specimens of the larvae of the black carpet 

 beetle, which may shed skins half an inch long. The adults are 

 hard-shelled beetles which are broadly or elongate oval. 



The adult of the black carpet beetle (fig. 3) is uniformly blackish, 

 with brownish legs. ^ The others have blackish or brownish bodies, 

 but their body color is concealed by a dense covering of small scales 

 so colored as to form designs that are helpful in separating the 



11144°— 38 Issued March 1938. 



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