Next you will learn:
- What do bedbugs eat and is blood really the only source of their food;
- How many bed bugs can live without blood and will they die if they leave the apartment for several months;
- Do bedbugs bite domestic animals (cats, dogs) and why chicken coops are sometimes simply teeming with these parasites;
- You will also find out if bed bugs live in the wild and if you can pick them up somewhere by accident ...
Bed bug bites are a kind of paradox of modern civilization. These parasites, which plagued people even in stone caves, today easily adapt to the conditions of apartments with European-quality repairs and continue to multiply successfully, despite all the achievements of the chemical industry that produces insecticidal preparations.
A huge number of apartments and houses in Russia, the USA, Great Britain, China, in developed and developing countries are simply teeming with bedbugs (the problem is especially acute in small hostels through which a significant flow of people of medium and low income passes).
But why is it so difficult to fight these bloodsuckers? After all, it would seem that bed bugs feed on human blood, which means that it is enough to leave the apartment for a couple of weeks, and that’s it! Parasites will die, so to speak, of starvation - simply for lack of a source of food.
However, practice shows that even if you leave a room infected with bedbugs for six months, not the entire population of parasites often dies: the surviving individuals again begin to bite people and actively multiply.
But how does it work? What did bedbugs eat all these months, and do they really only feed on human blood? Are they going into hibernation? Let's figure it out together...
The diet and method of feeding the bed bug
The only food of a bed bug is really only the blood of mammals. Like other types of bedbugs (and there are more than 40,000 species of them in nature), the jaws of apartment parasites have turned into an elongated proboscis, with which the insect pierces human skin, reaches a blood vessel and sucks blood to saturation.
It is interesting
Generally speaking, what bed bugs feed on shines through the translucent walls of their young larvae: their bodies seem scarlet from drunk blood (see examples in the photos below).
If you catch several insects of varying degrees of saturation, then it is easy to notice that hungry adults have a flat brown body, and hungry larvae are light brown or light yellow. When satiated, the parasites turn dark scarlet, their bodies swell, filling with fresh blood.
At the same time, in their "table habits" blood-sucking bugs are quite original. So, for example, they are not satisfied with sucking blood from only one wound for one feeding.They in most cases make several punctures along one blood vessel (or even without reference to it).
Due to this feature, bed bug bites stand out noticeably among the bites of other human parasites: their traces are usually connected in chains with an interval of 1-2 centimeters. A kind of paths are formed from bites (so if you find such paths on your body, then you should not attribute them to allergies, as unprepared people often do when they first “get acquainted” with bedbugs).
In addition, bed bugs only bite on the hairless parts of the body. Because of their wide flat abdomen, it is difficult for these blood-sucking parasites to break through the hairline to human skin, so they almost never bite into the head and inguinal region.
On a note
Common bed bug bite sites are the buttocks, thighs, flanks, abdomen, back, arms, neck, and face.If a person sleeps in underwear, parasites do not crawl under it and bite only open parts of the body.
The bug is a nocturnal bloodsucker. He prefers to attack his prey in the interval from two in the morning to five in the morning, when a person sleeps most soundly. The bites are practically painless, but the saliva secreted by the parasite, some time after it enters the skin tissues, begins to cause itching. Accordingly, it is usually possible to catch the parasite directly at the moment of the bite only with a light sleep or with an accidental awakening at night.
And further: Where the hell did the bugs come from in the apartment and what to do in such a situation
A characteristic feature is that after nightly feeding of bloodsuckers, small bloody spots often remain on a white sheet.
It is interesting
Other types of bugs living in nature can pierce the stems and fruits of plants, sucking out their juices. Some attack arthropods, and large bugs even attack fish and frogs, sucking out almost all the insides of their victims. However, most bed bugs are vegetarian and do not attack humans.
Bed bugs today live almost exclusively in or near human dwellings, and in nature they are found only in very specific places - for example, in the nests of bats.
How long can bed bugs live without blood?
In general, we can say that bedbugs live without food for a long time. One or two months of hunger strike for them are practically harmless and do not even require falling into a stupor and any inhibition of physiological processes.
If there is no food source near the bloodsucker bug for too long, then it can fall into a state similar to suspended animation, in which the biochemical processes in its body are greatly slowed down. In such a kind of hibernation, an insect can spend up to a year, remaining alive.
There are cases when residents of apartments wrapped mattresses infected with bedbugs with plastic wrap in the hope that the parasites would have nothing to eat and they would die without blood in a couple of months. However, even after six months of keeping the mattress wrapped in film, the bugs in it were still alive.
On a note
In comfortable living conditions, the life span of a bed bug is about 12-14 months. If hibernation is present in the life cycle, then this period increases.
It is useful to consider the following nuances:
- adult bugs live longer without food than larvae;
- without receiving fresh blood, the female cannot lay another batch of eggs, so the reproduction of parasites practically stops;
- without receiving blood, the larva is not able to molt, its development slows down sharply.
It is interesting
Normally, a bed bug feeds every 5-6 days, and in between, it digests the blood it has drunk. The larvae may feed more frequently, but at each feeding they bite less and suck less blood than the adult.
Even if several dozen bedbugs live in the house, a person may not pay attention to their bites for a long time. Often, parasites bite only one person in the family, practically without touching the rest of the residents.
Review:
“We recently rented an apartment, unfurnished. All new furniture was bought and renovated. About a month later, she began to find bite marks on the child. At first I thought it was an allergy, because my husband and I had nothing at all.Then I already found bedbugs right in the nursery bed. Where did they come from? The apartment was empty for a whole year, no one lived in it. Neighbors look at me like I'm crazy, they say that everything is clean with them ... "
Marina, Moscow
And further: We caught bedbugs and tested the effect of GEKTOR powder on them - a pretty killer thing turned out to be ...
Can bed bugs suck the blood of pets?
It is generally accepted that bed bugs do not bite pets: cats, dogs, as well as guinea pigs, rats, etc. However, in reality, everything is not so simple.
In certain situations (critical for survival, that is, when there is no other food at all), blood-sucking bugs can also bite domestic animals. It is important that all mammals and birds are potential victims for bedbugs: parasites can, if necessary, feed on the blood of pigeons in attics and the blood of rats in basements.
However, it is much more difficult for bloodsuckers to eat even on rats than on humans - the presence of a dense woolen cover makes it difficult to access the skin surface. There is no need to talk about dogs and cats here - due to difficulties with access to the skin, bedbugs practically do not touch these animals.
Even if people do not live in the apartment for a long time, but there are pets, parasites gradually leave the premises, if possible (usually through cracks and ventilation ducts to neighboring apartments).
A "tidbit" for bedbugs is domestic chickens, with their thin skin and featherless areas around the eyes and beak. That is why chicken coops become infected very often: bed bugs feed on bird blood with the same pleasure as human blood. Often in rural areas it is necessary to poison chicken coops from bedbugs even more often than residential buildings - bedbugs multiply rapidly here.
Bed bugs and their diet in nature
In general, the number of bed bugs living in nature today is much less than the total number of their apartment populations.
Sometimes wild populations of bed bugs are found in caves, which maintain approximately the same temperature all year round: parasites here feed on the blood of bats. Chiropterans have no hair on their wings, and easily accessible blood vessels under their thin skin, which provides bedbugs with almost ideal conditions for feeding.
In some places in nature, bedbugs constantly live in the burrows of rodents and the nests of colonial birds. But these are, one might say, fragments of their main population.
It is interesting
Scientists believe that it was in the caves in prehistoric times that the bugs first tasted human blood and switched to feeding on it. Since then, these parasites have become constant companions of man, and their populations in caves are considered to be a kind of conservatives.
Today, in addition to bed bugs, some species of predatory bugs parasitize bats. In the video below, you can see how this meal takes place.
What you need to know about bed bugs to a modern person
The bed bug larva sucks blood, greatly increasing in size.
Death to bedbugs!
I live in an empty apartment and I have bugs for 10 years! I lie down on the floor and draw a circle around me with chalk against bedbugs. That's how I sleep.
And what if you lie on the sofa and draw around the sofa with chalk?
So, probably, the sofa itself has been in the privatization of bedbugs for 10 years already.
Tell me please! Summer. Brought someone else's ottoman to the country. Stood outside for 3 days. 10 meters to the house. Bed bugs and cockroaches were found in it. They burned the ottoman, but what if some of the living creatures managed to escape? Can she crawl all the way into the house? How to be?
Arrange a dressing for the owners of the ottoman. Of course, the most active part of the bugs climbed to look for food sources in the house. 10 meters is no problem for them. Call disinfectors to sanitize your dacha before it's too late.
Julia, the most trouble for bedbugs is frosty air or ordinary boiling water. This is death for them. In addition, these creatures are repelled by the smell of vinegar and kerosene.
We have bedbugs, terrible, all day at home. Scary, wow!
And I took one bitch under the door of her apartment with half a thousand pieces a year, so that I would not suffer alone.
So bitch and it is necessary! Correctly!
Does anyone know if they sell a syringe from these creatures?
Is there a real cure for them?
Repair of the apartment and the facility is good, I don’t remember the name, some kind of liquid. You dissolve in water and spray, but all the furniture will have to be thrown out. We processed it 5 times - and thank God, we got rid of them. I think it cost a kopeck piece somewhere in a thousand rubles.
In Uncle Vanya's room, where there are chests of drawers and cupboards ... Evil yellow bugs lived in a leather sofa!
They were gassed, smeared with kerosene, sprinkled with powder, poured with boiling water.
Nothing helped, there was very little sense ...
In short, Uncle Vanya turned out to be more cunning than bedbugs and simply sold the sofa. Recently, a person from an official organization was invited to kill bedbugs. Oh how. They ripped off 6,700 rubles for processing a three-room apartment. They fired up the hot fog and gave a guarantee for 6 months. But the hot fog, like the cold one, turned out to be like a deception ...
I just bought everything myself and sprayed it the old fashioned way. Everything cost 3000 rubles. People! Dealers from sanitary and epidemiological stations and other services are squeezing you into money. Fortunately, the licensing of this business ended in 2007. Cheerful students work as exterminators and earn huge sums for hot fog.
What drug was sprayed?
I have a bag of bedbugs in the attic for 3 years. It's cold in winter and hot in summer. How can you be sure they're all dead?
Well, they definitely died in the cold)
My friend also slept on the floor (on the mattress) because of these "creatures". Only around the mattress I glued a long flexible ten with electrical tape (t above 50 degrees).And the sofa had to be thrown away ... By the way, they called a brigade, poisoned them with "cold fog", with some simple means, however, in high concentration, 5 times higher than the norm, it seems. For 4-5 months, very sluggish, dried-up specimens came across ... Probably, it was necessary to repeat the processing (maybe with a different, newer tool). About a year later, "activity" began again, there was a "nest" in the outlet from the neighbors. Yes, and the sofa was fitted somewhere in the left office.
We, too, suffered this misfortune! They tore off the upholstery with a sofa (we sleep on a chipboard with foam rubber), poisoned it with a Raptor. We were at the dacha for 2 months, and all this time starving creatures were waiting for us. The other day they bathed the whole room in vinegar, including the sofa. It came out cheap - 10 liters for 160 rubles. Like, shut up!
From the neighbors, after their European-quality repair, bedbugs moved to us. They called in the Clean City disinfectors - it turned out, as always, a scam. They ripped off the money, they began to breed more money, but we did not fall for it, we paid only the agreed amount. After treatment on the same day, the bugs began to brazenly run. We will fight on our own. Do not trust disinfectors, especially Clean City.
You need to sprinkle in the bed, in the cracks and everywhere turmeric (powder). After that, vacuum and walk with hot steam, having processed all the cracks - wherever the bugs can be. There is no information about this, because it is unprofitable for companies that bully.
See that there are no allergies. You just need to pour it everywhere, always in plastic sockets, switches, in wooden beds, in cracks in the parquet. Sprinkle the mattress completely with powder, as well as sprinkle everywhere in upholstered furniture. Turmeric paralyzes bedbugs, they suffocate and die.
The dry concentrate "From Bedbugs" helped me.
And I believe that bedbugs like to attack people with a certain blood type. They never bite my mother. But me and my son are bitten so that the horror covers. We will fight. Discovered recently purely by accident. Never before. I just woke up in the middle of the night with severe itching in my legs. Didn't sleep until midnight. Only now I understand why.
In addition to the basic methods of struggle, you can add the washing of all blankets, rugs and everything that can be washed. Moreover, the temperature must be set to the maximum. And everything that can be treated with chemistry should be treated.
The best remedy is Karbofos! As they say, tested on yourself. EFFECT - 100%. Check it out too. I don't think I'm wrong.