--- title: Minibeasts in the house: house spiders, silverfish, woodlice, moths and cockroaches — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Minibeasts in the house: house spiders, silverfish, woodlice, moths and cockroaches», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Your home is a small wild world: spiders hunt in the corners, silverfish nibble old bo --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Minibeasts in the house: house spiders… # Minibeasts in the house: house spiders, silverfish, woodlice, moths and cockroaches Lesson 370 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/0/) — Your home is a small wild world: spiders hunt in the corners, silverfish nibble old books, woodlice hide under flowerpots, moth caterpillars munch wool and dust mites live in your bed. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/1/) — Most of them want the same things as you: a warm, sheltered place with food and water, and they come out when the lights are off. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/2/) — Find a big spider in the bath and it looks as if it crawled up the plughole, but it almost certainly fell in while hunting and cannot climb the slippery sides; a towel ramp lets it out. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/3/) — Many scary stories about house minibeasts are myths, and the best way to keep pests away is not sprays but cleaning crumbs, fixing drips and airing clothes. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/4/) — A spider in the bath almost certainly fell in while hunting and cannot climb the slippery sides, and a plughole's water trap stops spiders coming up the drain; most spiders have eight legs and eight eyes. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/5/) — The big spiders seen in houses in autumn are mostly males already living there, walking about looking for partners; giant house spiders can have a leg span of about 7 centimetres. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/6/) — House spiders eat flies, moths and even other spiders, so they are free pest control. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/7/) — There is no evidence that people swallow eight spiders a year in their sleep, and a breathing, rumbling, warm mouth is a danger signal that spiders avoid. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/8/) — Silverfish are wingless insects with three long tails that have looked much the same for an enormously long time; they eat starch (the stuff in flour and pasta), glue, paper and crumbs, like damp dark places and can live a year without food. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/10/) — Woodlice breathe with gill-like parts that must stay damp, so they hide in wet dark places, and they can take up water through tiny tubes at the back as well as through the mouth. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/11/) — Woodlice eat their own poo to recycle copper their bodies need and clean up the garden by eating dead leaves and wood. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/12/) — Holes in wool clothes are made by clothes moth caterpillars, not the adult moths, which do not eat at all; the caterpillars eat wool, fur and feathers, and washing, airing and freezing woollens gets rid of them. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/13/) — Scientists filmed in 2024 that moths turn their backs to the brightest light to tell which way is up, so near a lamp they circle and get stuck; warm-coloured street lights trap fewer moths. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/14/) — Cockroaches breathe through little holes along their body, hide in warm cracks near food and water, and one is reported to live about a week without its head, until it dies of thirst. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/15/) — Cockroaches can survive much more radiation, the invisible harmful rays from nuclear bombs and accidents, than people, but some other insects take even more, and only about 30 of more than 4,000 kinds of cockroach live in houses. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/370-minibeasts-in-the-house-house-spiders-silverfish-woodlice-moths-and-cockroaches/16/) — Dust mites are about a quarter of a millimetre long, eat flakes of dead skin and have eight legs because they are relatives of spiders; their droppings can make some people sneeze and wheeze. - ← previous: [City birds: sparrows, starlings, swifts, crows and peregrines on tall buildings](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/369-city-birds-sparrows-starlings-swifts-crows-and-peregrines-on-tall-buildings/) - next →: [Street dogs and cats: feeding, safety and never touching a strange animal](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/371-street-dogs-and-cats-feeding-safety-and-never-touching-a-strange-animal/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)