Silverfish

Silverfish - actual size

Throughout time, humans have lived in close proximity to insects. Just today I read that in several French cities there has been an explosion in the bed bug population while over in Africa mosquitoes  continues to spread death as they are the prime carriers of malaria. Fortunately, most insects are benign and hardly trouble us at all. In fact, they mainly benefit our lives.

Here in northern England, insects are most obvious in the summertime. Out in our suburban garden, insects flit between plants or crawl in the grass. There are thousands of them. Long ago, Jimmie Rodgers recorded a song called "An English Country Garden" in which he asked: "How many insects come here and go/ Through our English country garden? " Well for the life of me Jimmie I cannot say but a hell of a lot.

Sometimes, I visit our downstairs toilet before I go to bed and very often I spot an insect on our vinyl flooring. I have only ever seen one on its own and I have never seen one in the daytime.

It scuttles about and obviously does not appreciate the electric light. See the image at the top - it is a silverfish  and it loves dark, damp places like benighted bathrooms. I guess that if we have one silverfish there must be more but I have never seen them. If you get an infestation they can cause minor damage  but I think that our silverfish must be living off dead skin particles and dandruff.       

You are probably curious about how silverfish reproduce so I have undertaken extensive research (read the Wikipedia page) to satisfy your curiosity...

"Before silverfish reproduce, they carry out a ritual involving three phases, which may last over half an hour. In the first phase, the male and female stand face to face, their vibrating antennae touching, then repeatedly back off and return to this position. In the second phase, the male runs away and the female chases him. In the third phase, the male and female stand side by side and head to tail, with the male vibrating his tail against the female. Finally, the male lays a spermatophore, a sperm capsule covered in gossamer, which the female takes into her body via her ovipositor to fertilize her eggs. The female lays groups of fewer than 60 eggs at once, deposited in small crevices. The eggs are oval-shaped, whitish, about 0.8 mm (0.031 in) long, and take between two weeks and two months to hatch. A silverfish usually lays fewer than 100 eggs in her lifetime..."

I don't know what our silverfish is called but I shall call him Hector after the famed Trojan warrior of Greek mythology. A few minutes ago, he was there on the floor once again when I went into the toilet to urinate. I told him he shouldn't be looking.

AI image of a silverfish talking to a spider