Backpacker makes horrifying discovery in a bathroom during Australian farm stay – so would you have spotted this creepy crawly?
- Traveller posts Tik Tok showing a creepy crawly under his bathroom plug
- Post went viral, with followers debating what inset it could be
- The Australian Museum identified the creature as a centipede
A Brazilian man travelling around Australia has posted a video of a creepy crawly lurking in his bathroom to TikTok sparking a debate about what it could be.
Heitor Cozero posted from a farm-stay at Mudgee, New South Wales, on Wednesday, showing claw-like legs protruding from under the bathroom vanity sink plug.
‘New fear unlocked’, Mr Cozero tagged the post.
Mr Cozero stands over the bathroom sink during his Mudgee farm-stay, about to reveal his disturbing find
Mr Cozero’s TikTok went viral, prompting an anxious discussion about exactly what creepy crawly might be.
Several said it reminded them of a creature from the popular TV drama Stranger Things.
But most people thought it would be either a centipede or a millipede, while some thought the video showed a spider.
‘Centipedes scare me more than spiders!’ one poster wrote.
‘Welcome to Australia!’ more than one person joked.
After viewing the clip, the Australian Museum said the culprit was most likely a ‘house centipede’.
According to the Australian Museum it is ‘scientifically known as Allothereua maculata, the most common centipede throughout southern Australia’.
‘They live in urban areas, forests and woodlands. This species is mostly encountered indoors.’
Nearly 400,000 people viewed the post.
What disturbed many commenters was whether the creature was dangerous. Several people said in the thread they had received painful centipede bites.
‘Technically, House Centipedes can bite but they are considered harmless to people.’
Whether Mr Cozero had seen one before wasn’t clear from the post, but according to the Australian museum, the biggest centipede in the world – Scolopendra gigantea – is found throughout South America.
‘It is a 30 centimetre centipede from South America that is able to eat mice and lizards,’ the museum said.
Unwelcome visitor: Mr Cozero’s Tik Tok went viral this week with commenters anxiously debating what all those legs could belong to
An Australian woman also found a centipede in her shoe during her morning ritual of checking her footwear for bugs before putting them on
Recently an Adelaide woman had a lucky escape from a painful bite from a centipede when she spotted it in her shoe as she was about to put it on.
Remembering her morning ritual of checking her footwear for bugs before putting them on, she spied the creepy crawly just in time.
The woman’s husband posted a photo to social media of her blue Vans at their Adelaide home on Wednesday.
Inside, a brown centipede with orange legs sat inside of the woman’s shoe.