[Animals] Bed bugs are everywhere and they are good at what they do

[FNX Magokiler]

Fashion designers and celebrities from various industries recently gathered in Paris for Fashion Week, but they weren't the only ones making headlines. Videos of bedbugs crawling through the city's padded crevices, from subway seats to movie theater recliners, flooded social media and news channels.

The insects have fueled widespread concern in Paris, France, and the rest of the world because of the number of travelers in the city who could return home with a bloodsucking hitchhiker in tow. "No one is safe," tweeted the first deputy mayor of Paris during Fashion Week (September 25 - October 3).

Although bed bugs can be annoying, these insects do not spread disease and are generally more of an itchy nuisance than a serious threat to your health. They were largely absent from the 1940s until the late 1990s due to pesticide use, but have re-emerged in recent years, exploding in almost every major city, from New York (United States) and Hong Kong ( China). The situation in Paris may not be an outbreak at all, but rather evidence of a long-standing problem, and an example of what makes these creatures so effective.

"I'm guessing they've had a bed bug problem for a long time," says Zachary DeVries, an urban entomologist at the University of Kentucky. "It's not like it showed up during Fashion Week. Someone just happened to see it and it caught their eye... right place, right time, or in his case, probably wrong place, wrong time."

Anyone who has experienced a bed bug infestation in their own home knows that the bites of these insects can cause uncomfortable, itchy welts.

 

 

People probably also know how difficult it is to eliminate bed bugs once they get in, nesting inside the fabrics and cushions of furniture.

An individual bed bug usually only lives a few months or, in some cases, up to a year. But that's enough time for a po[CENSORED]tion to explode, according to DeVries.

"You could leave a single female in your house that has been mated and, very quickly, it can start a po[CENSORED]tion that can grow out of control in a matter of weeks or months," he says.

(Related: How to effectively avoid insect bites in summer)

What are bed bugs?
  Bed bugs are part of a family of insects called Cimicidae, which includes about 100 species of small parasitic insects that feed on warm-blooded animals. Only three of these species typically bite humans, the most common of which is known as Cimex lectularius.

Adult bed bugs are reddish brown, wingless and about 6 millimeters long, about the size of an apple seed. They are often confused with other blood suckers, such as fleas, but can be differentiated by their flat, oval bodies.

"Bed bugs have been a problem for as long as we've had records," DeVries says. Their tiny remains have even been found in Egyptian tombs dating back more than 3,500 years. But where did they come from in the first place? Scientists are still unsure of the early ancestors of bed bugs, but one of the leading theories about the emergence of modern bed bugs is that they evolved in association with bats.

"About 200,000 years ago, when humans cohabited in caves with bats, a lineage of bed bugs associated with humans," says Coby Schal, an urban entomologist at North Carolina State University in the United States. "However, as humans left the cave, that lineage followed them."

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.es/animales/2023/10/chinches-parasitos-extendidos-ciudades-todo-mundo