When I was very young, my parents used to say, “don’t let the bed bugs bite” while they were putting me to sleep. I didn’t know what bed bugs were and I’ve still never seen one, but apparently they died off right about the time I was born and have now come back with a vengeance. I know they’ve menaced the home of at least one relative. I hope they don’t show up in our home. In any case, check this out:
The classic bedbug strain that all newly caught bugs are compared against is a colony originally from Fort Dix, N.J., that a researcher kept alive for 30 years by letting it feed on him.
But Stephen A. Kells, a University of Minnesota entomologist, said he “prefers not to play with that risk.”
He feeds his bugs expired blood-bank blood through parafilm, which he describes as “waxy Saran Wrap.”
Coby Schal of North Carolina State said he formerly used condoms filled with rabbit blood, but switched to parafilm because his condom budget raised eyebrows with university auditors.
Bug scientists are weird people. Have you seen any bed bugs lately? Have any idea why they don’t spread disease like all other people-biting insects?
yes, weird. that’s something I hadn’t read about the bedbugs, something to look forward to reading more about!! – no time these days; but glad I had time to find link to this story I recall from a while back (instead of working)
http://legacy.lclark.edu/dept/public/objects/BilgerSpiders.pdf
Articles have said that little research has been done on bedbugs, with few experts now, because they retreated so much over the last few decades. It would seem, though, that if they could figure out why bedbugs don’t transmit disease, they might have a way of reducing the transmission of disease from other insects.
Philadelphia is apparently the 2nd most affected city.
Well, the reason for the increase in bedbugs is obvious.
God has cursed beds because that is where gay people have sex.
They’re bedbugs.
They get enough sleep.
Duh.
No internet or media to make ’em all worrisome, either.
Healthy little debbils.
Bet on it.
AG
Back when I lived in the tropics, bedbugs were just another fact of life. You countered them by putting the legs of beds and furniture in tunafish-type cans filled with kerosene. And you didn’t have soft furniture (including mattresses) that couldn’t be washed or regularly doused in said kerosene. Nonetheless it was not uncommon to see somebody take their wooden-slat bed platform out to the street to give it some water and sun, and when it hit the ground to see a “shadow” composed of bedbugs that fell off in the same patterns as the slats they’d been clinging to.
And yet sometimes they’d just go away or never show up. I suspect some people are repulsive to them. Or maybe it’s a much more intricate dance like the flea/tapeworm cycle.
See one of the things that helped kill them off was DDT. I wonder if with some precautions we could ramp up the DDT for just a short time, like a year or two, to beat them back again.
Anyhow, TPM interviews Donna Shalala on the nuts and bolts of a Government Shutdown over funding the health insurance law. Might be the greatest challenge of Obama’s presidency.
“any idea why they don’t spread disease like all other people-biting insects?”
It’s purely a survival mechanism: if they did spread disease, they would have been eradicated a long time ago.
Didn’t hurt the fleas or mosquitoes none.
i don’t know if we, or anyone else I know, has them, but as someone who tends to buy clothes and furniture at the thrift store, I have my eyes open for them.
the worst thing about the creepy little bastards is when they bite, they inject some kind of anesthetic so you can’t feel it.
There are plenty of people-biting insects that don’t spread disease. Chiggers, horseflies, deer flies, black flies, most ticks (deer ticks of Lyme Diseases fame being an exception). Even most species of mosquito, though there are several nasty ones. And if you expand to other arthropods, there are scabies mites (the mites themselves are the disease) and any biting spider you care to name.
It might be more fruitful to look for what the few disease vectors have in common, rather than what the non-vectors do.
I’ve always heard (and perhaps it’s wrong) that you don’t get bedbugs when your bed has a metal frame, it’s only wood-frame beds that get infested.
No, I’ve never seen one. Not sure if ever bitten by one (are their bites that different from other bugs?)
Yes, there are definitely better things to be bitten by in bed.