Home » Mold vs Bug Poop – The Definitive Guide

But if you find yourself asking this question, don’t worry, people often mistake insect droppings for mold. It’s easy to do unless you know what you’re looking at.

Home inspectors see tiny black dots on the wood, assume it is mold, and mis-inform the potential buyer. Most of the time the culprit is either Camelback Crickets or Cockroaches. Both have similar looking droppings at a glance, but they’re quite different if you want to get up close and personal.

Almost always, if you have camelback crickets in the crawlspace, the dropping will be concentrated around the upper perimeter of the space and not in the middle of the space. The poop will look like thousands of tiny black dots on the wood. 

Usually, you’ll see lots of the camelback crickets scurrying away as you crawl by. They’re fairly harmless unless they jump on you. The key to controlling them is in humidity control. These guys love a damp crawlspace, so if you dry out the space well enough, they generally don’t tolerate the drier air and should move on.

It’s difficult to remove the droppings with our Soda Blasting process, as the tiny bits bug poop are tar-like and stick very well to the wood. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to remove.

Mold, however, can grow anywhere on the crawlspace joists and it comes in many different colors. Here’s a photo of a common mold growth in a crawlspace.

The big difference between Mold and Bug Poop is the mold is literally alive and feeding off the wood, whereas the bug poop is nothing more than excrement.

If you’re not sure what you’re looking at, give the pros at American Crawlspace Solutions a ring and we’d be glad to properly identify the spots in your basement or crawlspace.