Pill Bug Bites and Treatment

Do Pill Bugs Bite?

No. Pill bugs cannot bite or sting people or pets, and they are not known to spread disease. They do not eat stored food, clothing, furniture or the wood in your home. When they wander inside, often several at once after heavy rain, the only trouble is finding them on the floor. They are a nuisance, not a threat.

Safe to Handle, With a Few Practical Notes

Pill bugs have small mouthparts made for scraping soft, decaying plant material, and they have no fangs, stinger or venom. Children can pick them up and watch them roll into a ball without any risk of being bitten or stung.

• Hand washing: pill bugs live in soil, mulch and leaf litter, so wash hands after handling them or after gardening, as you would after touching anything from the yard.
• Pets: dogs and cats sometimes eat them, and they are not considered toxic. Call your vet only if a pet shows vomiting, diarrhea or other symptoms that don’t settle, since something else it ate may be the cause.
• Cleanup: sweep up dead ones indoors so they don’t attract other scavenging insects.

If you’re finding red, itchy bites and also seeing pill bugs, the bites are almost certainly from something else. In Florida, common culprits include fleas, mosquitoes, chiggers, ants and bed bugs. Two other creatures share pill bug hiding spots and are easy to confuse with them: centipedes, which are flat, fast, and can give a painful bite, and millipedes, which don’t bite but can release a fluid that stains or irritates skin.

Wash any skin contact with soap and water. See a doctor if a bite or skin reaction swells, spreads, blisters or shows signs of infection, or if you can’t tell what caused it. To keep pill bugs outside in the first place, see our pill bug control page.