Bugs That Look Like Sesame Seeds

If you think you've spotted small brown seeds in bed or in your house, only to find they began crawling away after a second or two, you're certainly not alone! A number of tiny household pests appear similar to sesame seeds or other small grains. If you take a closer look at what you thought was a seed and find you're looking at an insect, here's what you need to know!

You might encounter bugs that look like small brown seeds in bed or in areas where you typically store your food, such as a pantry. While exactly which insect you might encounter varies based on where you live, a few main types of insects typically fall into the 'sesame seed-like' appearance. You might encounter bed bugs, their eggs, several types of small beetles or weevils.

If you think you've spotted small brown seeds in bed, or think you might have spilled a few sesame seeds but don't remember eating any, you might want to take a closer look to make sure you don't have ​bedbugs​. If you spot something that looks similar to a sesame seed, but definitely is not, you might be looking at bedbug eggs.

Now, if you see something seed-like that is brown in color and is moving, an adult bedbug might be the culprit. Using a magnifying glass can help you get a better look at the potential bedbug or egg. Visible signs of bedbugs, like bites on your skin or stains around the edges of your mattress, could all point to a bedbug infestation.

If you think you might have bedbugs, ask your parent to take a look and have them contact a professional pest control company.

Another seed-like insect you might find in your home is the ​drugstore beetle​. These little brown insects typically measure about two or three millimeters long. These little pests like to live inside pantries and cabinets, feeding on spilled food or boring into packages in search of food. They can even chew their way through aluminum foil to access food and even some medications.

Keeping pantries clean and removing any spilled food can help prevent infestations of these beetles. However, if you think you might have drugstore beetles in your home you should have a parent contact a pest control company to remove them, as they can hide within crevices in your pantry even when you think you've removed them all.

If you're pouring a bowl of cereal or portioning out some pasta for cooking and find yourself looking at small black seed-like creatures, you might have found ​rice weevils​. You can identify weevils by looking closely at the shape of the creatures. Weevils have a long snout that makes up almost a third of their total length, which is about two or three millimeters.

Your parent can control infestations of these little creatures by disposing of infected foods, properly sealing any foods that might become contaminated and using sticky traps to capture any remaining weevils in the pantry. For persistent infestations, your parent might call a pest control company for assistance.

The ​sawtoothed grain beetle​ is another common home pest that you might find in your food or pantry that looks similar to a seed. These beetles have flat, elongated bodies with short antenna. They measure about three millimeters long. Not only can these beetles infest the food you purchase from the grocery store, but they can also spread throughout a shelf of products and other areas of the store.

As with the rice weevils, your parent should remove all infested food, keep food in sealed containers and remove all beetles that they find. For further assistance, they should contact a pest control company.