Bed bugs are small nocturnal insects that live by feeding off of your blood and other warm-blooded hosts. Although they do not spread disease, these pests can still make your life miserable. This is due to their bites causing skin rashes, allergic reactions, and even psychological effects like anxiety.
Appearance, lifestyle, and habits
Do you know what bed bugs are? Below is a description of how they appear.
Bed bugs are reddish-brown wingless insects with flat bodies that can easily squeeze through cracks and crevices. They have six legs which allow them to move quickly throughout your house at night. This is when you are sleeping or resting during the day to find their next victim. The average size of the adult bug is about 0.04 inches long by 0.08 inches wide. It can hide anywhere.
These pests go through five stages during development: egg, larva, nymph, pupa, and finally adulthood. After hatching from the eggs, the adults will feed for five minutes before returning to their hiding spots. They live off of your blood and can survive for months without it.
Do you know how bed bugs reproduce? Mated adults lay eggs in secluded areas on rough surfaces that are close to a food source. The female will then lay one to five eggs per day. They can fit 200 eggs within their lifetime. Eggs hatch within six and ten days into more bugs. This is due to the warmth from your body as well as their tiny size.
Are you wondering why bed bugs feed on humans? You provide the perfect environment with an ample food supply as well as no natural predators. These creatures can crawl up walls, ceilings, and even find ways through window screens.
Bed bug bites
Do you wonder what a bed bug bite looks like? You will have red bumps or welts on your skin. Scratching them can increase the likelihood of infection. It can lead to secondary effects such as dermatitis, eczema, and hay fever. Lack of attention to treating the bites will eventually make them go away within a few weeks. This is in the absence of further exposure to the same bug.
The most usual places that you can experience bed bugs are your home or even while traveling in hotels. Get rid of these pests through contact with an experienced exterminator. Do not use DIY methods for the safety of children or pets.
Identifying and treating an infestation
Do you know how to identify when there is a bed bug infestation? Read on for interesting facts about these bugs.
When detecting an infestation, the first sign of their presence is red bumps or welts on your skin that may appear in large groups or individually. It is easier to spot them early before population numbers increase. You should perform regular inspections during the day while all residents are home. Get rid of any infested items such as mattresses, bedding, box springs, and clothing by sealing them in plastic bags.
Having confirmed signs of an infestation within five or six rooms throughout your house, it is best to contact bed bug exterminators who handle this pest professionally. They will help you through the process by inspecting for signs of bed bugs. Pest Exterminators can offer you tips on how to spot them within crevices and cracks before they enter your home.
What to do if there is a bed bug infestation in your apartment or hotel room? It is best to immediately notify the front desk and deal with the problem right away!
Interesting Facts
Hearing about bed bugs for the first time can pique interest! Prepare to know 14 appealing facts about them:
Bed bug eggs are too small to see
They are about 1mm in size and show a milky color during their development. Scattering between cracks and crevices throughout your home is because of their need to go for food sources. When there is an infestation, you can find them behind electrical outlets, under carpets, along the seams of mattresses, bed frames, and even loose wallpaper.
Bed bugs are indeed visible to the human eye. But you may need a magnifying glass with a less than perfect vision. These pests can resemble other household bugs. It is important to know how different they look from one another. The average adult bed bug size ranges between 5mm and 7mm long.
Bed bugs can ingest seven times their body weight in blood
Bed bugs can become a terrible thing! They are gross and dangerous! A single bed bug may only weigh about 0.25 grams. But it can ingest seven times its body weight in human blood. This is when feeding off of victims who are asleep and unaware of what is happening around them. Prepare for a potential serious hurt or death. Its urticating toxins can cause anaphylactic shock!
Having bed bugs often can let you suffer from allergic reactions. This may differ between individuals with varied sensitivities to the toxins of these pests. Skin conditions such as eczema, dermatitis, and hay fever can develop.
Their saliva is an itchy irritant
When biting into your skin, they inject their saliva which contains anticoagulants and painkillers. It acts as a local anesthetic to numb your skin against the pain while feeding on your blood. But what does it do? When injected in tiny amounts, this can act like histamine. This causes red bumps or welts on your skin similar to mosquito bites that come with intense itching.
Regina Gries has let 20,000 bed bugs bite her for the purpose of Science
The entomologist, Regina Gries, let 20,000 bed bugs bite her arm! She took this risk to study the reaction of people who suffer from allergic reactions to their bites. Her goal was to develop medical treatment for them.
Bed bug saliva is very interesting! Some people describe it as feeling like a “bee sting.” Other experiences include fire ants and sandflies biting them. They inject an anticoagulant that prevents your blood from clotting.
This action increases the pain and itching factor that makes you scratch more often. It also gives them a chance to feed off of you for longer periods before you start feeling any pain. They are parasites through and through.
Bed bugs can live in any environment
Bed bugs, unlike other parasites, can adapt well in different environments. They can live well within cold climates and high altitudes up into your attic or roof space. Their survival is for days without a blood meal out in the open. This is when they can stay dormant without access to food sources.
What are their habitats? These pests are terrestrial animals that feast well within your homes, hotels, hospitals, and nursing homes. They can also move on clothing whether in public transport or your luggage.
The modern bed bug lifestyle evolves with humans. This is one interesting fact worth noting. These insects follow people wherever they go. They developed the ability to travel short distances with ease. It has been interesting for entomologists to study their behavior and biology in general over the years.
Bed bugs have sharp instincts
Just because they do not think does not mean that they lack sharp instincts. For example, these pests can detect a threat from as far as 50 meters away! This is due to their bed bug senses being on the lookout for danger. When you approach, it instinctively hides or moves to another location where it feels safer.
In some cases, you can find bed bugs that invade different homes. This is even without occupants present at all. Reputable researchers discovered these interesting facts about them. It took several scientific studies over the years for them to realize these details.
Bed bugs resist pesticides
The interesting bed bug facts go on and on. These blood-sucking insects can become resistant to pesticides after several generations of breeding. Interestingly, they adjust their biology over time to adapt to these dangers in their environment.
While you may want to use pesticide bombs, this is often not the best way to combat them without professional help. This interesting fact spreads awareness for people who do not know how serious it can become or what they should do during an infestation.
Yes, pesticides are becoming less effective against bed bugs. This is a topic that pest control professionals try not to discuss at friendly gatherings. They know how terrible the public perception of this issue already is. A licensed professional will say insects are responsible for resistance.
An unlicensed consumer might think your success rate is from applying too many chemicals. This is without knowing what works or does not with certain types of pests.
Bed bugs are picky about what they eat
The interesting bed bug facts continue with their diets. These creatures evolve in a way where they can only drink blood from mammals. This means you are off the menu, but your pets are fair game.
It explains why not all homes end up infested when there are plenty of humans around. They also learn to detect the type of mammal that enters their territory to pick out victims based on smell alone.
They also possess an interesting preference when it comes to mealtime. Bed bugs prefer human blood over everything else. This includes pigs, cows, dogs, cats, and even other insects as the need arises. They prefer to feed on your blood than other insects.
Bed bug saliva contains a mild anesthetic
Yes, bed bugs can bite you without letting you feel a thing. Their saliva contains interesting ingredients that dull your pain responses. This is why you might find red and itchy bumps on your skin after sleeping.
This interesting fact makes them even more of a nightmare for some people to live with. They might develop allergies over time where the bites cause severe swelling and discomfort. It can reach the point when you cannot sleep on your bed anymore. You can try using an anti-inflammatory cream such as cortisone when this condition gets out of hand.
Bed bugs are effective methods of parasitism for many organisms, including humans. These bloodsucking insects use their saliva to paralyze prey before biting them. Injecting neurotoxins is part of it that prevents the victim from waking up.
Bed bugs aren’t just city dwellers
Farming practices, the spread of heat treatment, and travel are responsible for interesting bed bug facts that you might not know. Pest control professionals believe that this species now thrives everywhere around the world.
This fact is due to a combination of factors. Everyone knows how fast they can reproduce when left unchecked over time. In simple terms, it means colonies grow large enough to infest several homes in a neighborhood or city block.
Some bed bug facts explain why residents of rural areas might still think they are safe. These creatures can hitchhike on your clothing, luggage, or other belongings. They relocate to another home without anyone noticing until it is too late.
Bed bugs can endure extreme conditions
Humans trying to get rid of them by using extremely cold temperatures is a bed bug fact at its best! You can place items such as clothing or linen in a freezer for days and it will not kill them.
This detail means that you should avoid freezing your house and belongings when this happens to you. It might seem like the perfect solution to end an infestation. But there are other interesting reasons why it does not work. These include:
Hot temperatures often result in empty shells left behind after reproductive cycles cease. Most predators do not like freezing weather, so they stay away. They curl up into separate pockets when exposed to extreme heat or cold. An adult bug can hibernate through anything.
Female bed bugs lay a lot of eggs
Letting them multiply in your home means that you have a bigger problem to deal with. Some facts about bed bugs include a female laying up to 500 eggs during her lifespan!
This trivia only gets worse when you look at how quickly they can reproduce! The average time from egg to adult is around 30 days for this species whether it is indoors or outside. In chilly weather, the process might even take longer because of their need to stay warm and cozy inside walls or cracks in furniture.
Bed bug populations explode in response to an increase in population size! These creatures can grow exponentially when insects happen to invade an apartment complex.
Bed bugs are slow
There is a reason why they got their name in the first place. Bed bugs are tiny creatures that do not like to go anywhere fast. They move by crawling and scooting on surfaces. This trivia makes them amazingly easy to catch!
What might become even more interesting is how hard they can get while still surviving for so long. This explains why you can see one crawling across your mattress as you sleep off and on for weeks or months at a time.
Bed bugs are fast foragers, able to move at least four feet in one minute. This is equivalent to an adult’s sprinting! They do this through crawling which helps them travel from room to room with ease. Getting stuck on walls or ceilings unable to explore any other locations until their next mealtime is real.
Bed bugs can’t climb smooth surfaces
There is good news for those trying to keep them out of their homes and businesses! Bed bugs cannot climb up smooth surfaces.
This trivia does not stop here. They can crawl down walls and across ceilings without a problem. You will love learning which surfaces do work as deterrents: glass and metal (smooth surfaces) and vinyl siding.
Bed bugs can have a tough time surviving on a completely smooth surface. They will try and walk on any kind of wall, even brick or plaster. Climbing surfaces for easy access are usually in homes with more than one level basement. These also include rocky walls.
Bed bugs can contract human pathogens
Do you wonder about bed bugs carrying the disease? The fact remains that they do not travel far from their nests to feed. They will wait as long as it takes for a meal to come to them.
While trivia about these creatures explain how unlikely it is for you to contract an illness, there are still diseases and other pathogens where this can happen. Some examples include:
Skin infections from scratching red bumps via bites and staphylococcus. It is also possible for heart, eye infections, and tuberculosis to develop.
Get bed bug help from the professionals at First Response Bed Bug Dogs
First Response Bed Bug Dogs can provide you with the best bed bug treatment service for your home! These annoying creatures come from every corner especially around vulnerable areas like mattress seams where they can hide. This is until an opportunity exists for their feeding time to come up again.
The bed bug dog inspection team has adequate training in how exactly to find these pests. It is the only company that combines human scent detection with a dog’s unparalleled sense of smell. Take advantage of this amazing capability to bring you effective, pinpoint infestations, and detections in minutes!
The dogs have an incredible 98% accuracy rate when it comes down to deciding the presence of bed bugs on your property.
Gaining new trivia about bed bugs guides you on how to deal with them. Call First Response Bed Bug Dogs today for more information about how easy the service is for your home or business!
