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Home  /  Crawling Insects  /  E is for Earwig
08 May 2013

E is for Earwig

Written by Brigitta
Crawling Insects earwig, forficula auricularia 2 Comments

The name of this pest has always baffled me.  Everyone knows I am not a big insect fan. But even the name of this particular pest is creepy! Why ear? And wigs? Why name it earwig?

Having done a little bit of research into the origin of the name I can now explain to you the meaning ( I hope!). It appears that the common name stems from the Old English wicga (insect) and ēare (ear). And the “ear connection” comes from the old wives tale that this insect used to burrow into the human brain to lay eggs by crawling inside the ear canal! Like most old wives tales, I do hope this one is untrue.

Despite the threatening name and appearance – they have a pincer tail – earwigs are relatively harmless. You are most likely to encounter them in the garden though they have been known to get indoors through cracks and small openings (following in the footsteps of the pesky garden ants no doubt!).

The back pincers on the earwig are harmlessAs a keen gardener, I have to say that I don’t recall meeting this insect before. My usual encounter is with slugs. Nevertheless my colleague recalls that back in Italy earwigs used to regularly invade her favourite fuchsia plant in her nonna’s  garden.

Just to add then, in case you are interested, the scientific name for the common earwig is Forficula auricularia. Sounds much better in Latin!

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Brigitta

I joined the Marketing & Strategy team at Rentokil in January 2008. Since this time my mind has been well and truly expanded on the merits of SEO and online marketing – a completely different language to me when I first started. But like any other foreign language…..you soon get the hang of it. My main loves outside of work are foreign languages, history, music, art and travel. I am currently learning Italian and taking lessons to play the piano! I am looking forward to bloging for you all!

2 Comments

  1. Susy Reply to Susy
    May 8, 2013 at 4:48 pm

    I hope the fact of the eggs inside the ear is a urban legend! It’s really creepy!

    Anyway I like the latin name is very similar to the Italian version “Forbicina” 🙂

  2. Alicia Reply to Alicia
    May 10, 2013 at 10:13 am

    Hi Andy

    Thank you for drawing my attention to this – I have amended the copy,

    Alicia

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