A new variety of millennium bug could soon be crawling around your computers, feeding off what could be the next fad in fast food - computer chips!

Bug check: Gordon Campbell-Thomas examines one of the minute bugs that crawled out of his computer

A York man has discovered tiny ant size bugs wriggling out of his computer, perhaps in a bid to repopulate the world in the run up to the new millennium.

Gordon Campbell-Thomas, the park ranger at St Nicholas Fields, an urban nature park in York, has collected five "caterpillar" like bugs from the keyboard of his computer.

Gordon said: "I couldn't believe it when I first saw them crawling out of my computer. At first I thought they might be the first stage of a caterpillar, but I'm not sure. They are black and very furry and have even spun a web. I've put them into a specimen jar, but I don't know how they are surviving - perhaps they are living on a diet of computer chips."

Gordon is planning to consult an entomologist, a specialist in dealing with insects, to find out what the bugs are. He said: "If this is an example of a millennium bug then they seem pretty harmless at the moment, I just hope they don't grow into something larger or more nasty!"

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