|
Hey guys. Just thought I'd comment on bed bugs. One several occasions over the past few years, I've picked up bed bugs. I was fortunate because I never had an infestation. I was only picking up one at a time. (The bites were infrequent - about once per week, which is the normal time between feedings for one bug. I eventually caught a single bug and the bites stopped.) It was horrible, and I only had one bedbug. I think I'd go crazy if I had an infestation.
As far as how long the bedbugs can survive: this has been exaggerated in the popular media. When I captured the bedbugs, I put them into a ziplock bag. They survive for maybe a month in a ziplock bag. It's pretty actively walking around the bag for the first week, then it slows down over the next few weeks. It doesn't move at all after about a month. I've also heard that they can go dormant if they have nothing to feed on, so maybe it was just going dormant. I'm sure the three-year thing is wrong though, because they look visibly dead (dehydrated, flat, hollow) within a few months. There's no way they survive for three years.
As far as the AIDS and bedbugs thing - I think scientists wanted to find out if HIV could be transmitted by bedbugs, since bedbugs drink people's blood and could potentially transmit disease between people (like the way mosquitoes transmit malaria). So far, no one has found any diseases that can be transferred by bedbugs.
|