Can bed bugs bite pets (cats, dogs, chickens)?

Bed bugs in our homes parasitize only on humans - their proboscis is adapted only for piercing thin and soft human skin. Only in the most "difficult" times for bedbugs - when people leave the premises for a sufficiently long period - bedbugs bite pets.

However, in general, this behavior is unnatural for bed bugs - even adult parasites with their long proboscis can hardly pierce the skin of animals, and in most cases small larvae cannot feed on cats and dogs at all.

Nevertheless, bugs are quite capable of delivering certain troubles to pets.

Review

“I could not understand why my rat had bleeding wounds on its body. I thought it was staph, but it usually just causes festering boils. And here it is the bites that the animal itself also scratches. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I discovered that someone was biting me too. It turned out - banal bed bugs. It was a surprise that they bite a rat, I thought they only drink blood from people. Apparently, they originally settled somewhere near the cage and were closer to it than to my bed.

Sasha, Moscow

Perhaps the only pets that suffer from bedbugs no less than people are birds (including chickens).

Their soft thin skin is just as accessible for piercing with the proboscis of a bug as is human, and parasites successfully use this. And they can settle in chicken coops as successfully as human housing.

 

Bed bugs in chickens: why are they dangerous and how to deal with them?

Chicken bugs do not exist in nature. Chickens are bitten either by bed bugs that attack humans, or by other parasites that the owner of the bird may confuse with bed bugs. For example, fleas.

In the photo below - such "chicken bugs" stuck around the bird's eyes. In fact, this is a typical chicken flea, which differs from bedbugs in its small size and the tendency to eat during daylight hours:

Bed bugs in chickens rarely parasitize, but if they already appear in the chicken coop, they quickly populate it and cause massive skin lesions in birds. The bug bites themselves greatly disturb the birds, and during mass attacks, egg production decreases in chickens, they gain weight more slowly, and death of young animals can be observed. In addition, chickens constantly pluck feathers in places where they feel itchy from bites, and as a result, ornamental birds lose their presentable appearance.

In some cases, bugs can cause hens to leave their egg clutches due to constant insect attacks even at relatively late incubation periods.

In a chicken coop, bedbugs hide in crevices and any dark narrow spaces: between cages and boards in their walls, under a layer of litter, in perches and nests. They usually bite birds at night, but they can go hunting during the day.

And further: Proven methods for the destruction of bedbugs, which have shown high efficiency

In winter, bugs normally survive temperatures down to minus 10 ° C and therefore almost always winter here.

On a note

Similarly, bedbugs can parasitize any poultry, from canaries to guinea fowls. Only waterfowl (ducks, geese) are well protected from them by fairly dense skin.

To get rid of bedbugs in chickens, the bird is removed from the chicken coop, and indoors, all surfaces are treated with Chlorophos or Karbofos in the same concentrations in which these products are used in residential premises.

After that, a thorough cleaning is carried out: litter and garbage are taken out, all cages and perches are washed, and the walls are cleaned. Such treatment should be carried out twice with an interval of 10-14 days.

 

Bed bugs in cats and dogs

Bed bugs bite these animals very rarely - cats and dogs have too thick skin and a thick coat.

However, bugs bite cats when people leave the premises for a week or two, and neighbors look after the animals - for lack of another source of fresh blood, bugs are simply forced to attack animals.

The situation is similar with bedbugs in dogs - only occasionally parasites can bite them for lack of another source of food. At the same time, bed bugs usually bite dogs only at night, and only parts of the body with the softest skin.

Review

“Our Toy began to be constantly bitten by some kind of parasites. I thought it was bedbugs, I was very afraid that they would jump on us. On his ears he constantly had bumps from bites, on his neck. They took him to the clinic, they said that these were not bedbugs, but ticks, and he caught them on the street. They said to buy a special collar or smear drops on his withers that repel ticks. And by the way, the vet said that bed bugs don't bite dogs at all."

Victoria, Irkutsk

If “bugs” in cats or dogs are found during the day, and even in very large quantities, these are definitely not bedbugs. Most likely, the parasites on the animal are ticks, which are approximately the same size, but differ in the number of legs (bugs have 6, ticks have 8), color (ticks are usually gray, green or black, and bugs are brown) and the absence of transverse stripes on body. In addition, a bug in a dog, when it is detected, always tries to retreat, and a tick, having stuck, is motionless and looks like a small growth on the skin.

It is extremely difficult to confuse bedbugs with fleas - fleas are very small and able to jump. Bedbugs run like cockroaches and cannot jump.

No special protection of cats and dogs from bedbugs is required: parasites attack them much less frequently than humans. Accordingly, it is necessary to destroy bedbugs in the room in which they nest, and not on pets.

And further: We got to the TOP remedy for bugs Executioner and tested it both in the tail and in the mane - watch the video...

 

Who else gets bitten by bed bugs?

Bed bugs were originally insects that parasitized small mammals in their burrows and nests. Most often in nature, bedbugs settle in the burrows of mouse-like rodents, ground squirrels and insectivorous animals. Here they have constant access to food.

But colonies of bats are much more attractive to bugs - at least because these bats have several areas on the body that are not covered with hair. It is for such areas that the bugs bite.

In addition, the caves in which bat colonies settle have a more stable microclimate than any other places in the wild, even rodent burrows. And therefore, for bedbugs, this is a real paradise: an abundance of food, a constant temperature and a minimum of natural enemies.

It is interesting

The most famous "bug" caves are caves in Turkmenistan - the largest colonies of some rare species of bats are also known here. There are so many bugs in them that sometimes they lead to mass death of newborn bats.

 

What bugs are dangerous for mammals and birds?

Generally speaking, there are a lot of different types of bedbugs that can bite a person or a pet in nature.

• For example, in the water, a dog can accidentally be bitten by a smoothie or a water scorpion - these are also bedbugs.
• Occasionally, predatory bugs imprint their bite on the animal. However, such cases occur only when the animal inadvertently disturbs the bug, for example, by stepping on it with its paw or by crushing it, lying down on the grass.

Bedbugs that parasitize constantly are more dangerous for pets. Most of them are just in the family of predatory bugs. With rare exceptions, these insects do not settle in a human dwelling, but they can attack an animal resting on the street.

There are few predators in our latitudes, and they do not pose a particular danger to domestic animals. But in the tropics, these parasites carry many dangerous diseases, including the deadly Chagas disease, and therefore, when traveling, you need to protect yourself from them and protect your four-legged friends from them.

 

How to get rid of bedbugs - practical tips

 

Interesting video: bedbugs and their larvae bite a person