Bug is the common name of insects, numbering 40 thousand species. Most of them have nothing to do with humans. Some species harm crops, there are even useful ones: they eat caterpillars and aphids. From early spring to late autumn, representatives of this suborder of insects from the order of Hemiptera bask in the sun, delighting our eyes with colorful “outfits”. Everyone knows, for example, what a bug-soldier looks like. But there is one species that everyone remembers contact with as a nightmare.
Introducing the bedbug
In most cases, a person does not immediately realize that he has communicated with this insect. He does not know what the bug looks like, but he feels traces of his presence "on his own skin." If you wake up for several days in a row and find bite marks on your skin, you should think about it. It could be a bed bug.
He is very small. The bug is a blood-sucking insect (ecoparasite). It has a highly developed sense of smell, allowing you to quickly and efficiently find the victim by smell (usually a person, but sometimes an animal). Sucks blood once every seven days. But it multiplies exponentially. And now all his relatives together can poison the life of not only a large family, buteven the inhabitants of a high-rise building.
At the beginning of the last century, bedbugs were not a curiosity. After they began to be poisoned with pesticides and other poisons, they almost disappeared. But not all. Probably, the surviving representatives have adapted to the pesticides of the first generation and no longer react to them. Now bed bugs are showing up all over again. And not only in poor areas, but also in modern new buildings.
Appearance
What do bed bugs (photo) look like at home, or bed, or linen?
These are different names for the same insect. It has a flattened top and bottom body without wings. The body of the bug does not contain water. The length depends on the amount of blood drunk. It is said about him: “A well-fed one is not a friend to the hungry.” Having eaten, the bug increases not only in width, but also in length. Hungry reaches only 3 mm, full - 8 mm. By the way the bug looks, you can judge how long it has been eating. Its color depends on it. It ranges from dirty yellow (hungry), scarlet (just eaten) to dark brown (has been eating for a long time). The contours of the body also depend on the amount eaten: hungry - oval, full - round.
Let's take a closer look at what bedbugs look like (photo). Pet vampires have a body covered in hairs that can only be seen under a microscope. Females are larger than males. The bug has a proboscis with which it pierces the skin. There are two canals in the small jaws. One is for injecting poisonous saliva with an analgesic, the other is for sucking blood.
What does a full bed bug look like? Hevery different from hungry. Satiated - slow, round in appearance. Hungry - flat and nimble: in search of food, he can climb on the ceiling and plan down on the victim, like an autumn leaf.
The bug's body consists of segments, which helps it stretch when eating and avoid mechanical damage. It is almost impossible to crush a hungry bug. And it is very easy to feel full, even with a slight pressure.
Development stages
A bug goes through several stages in its life:
- egg;
- larva;
- adult (adult).
The female lays 5-12 eggs daily (there can be up to 500 in her life). Attaches with a special secret to the surface. The egg is milky white in color, shaped like a grain of rice, but much smaller - up to 1 mm. Not afraid of cold and poison. Therefore, when treating the apartment with a bedbug remedy, the eggs remain intact.
What do bedbug larvae look like? They are similar in appearance to the adult bug, but smaller and much lighter. Therefore, they are called nymphs.
A larva emerges from an egg in a week. She immediately begins to move and is ready to drink blood. At first, the nymph is transparent, so you can see the blood she has drunk through the skin. The larva molts five times (sheds its shell), each time first drinking blood. After molting increases in size. After 6 weeks, the larva turns into an adult. If development conditions are unfavorable, then the process is delayed up to 4 months.
The bug has been actively living for a year and a half. But ifthe temperature in the room drops below 18 ⁰С, it can hibernate (anabiosis) and starve for another year and a half. What does a bed bug look like in suspended animation? It will become thin and transparent, almost dry, seemingly dead. But this impression is deceptive. After the temperature rises, the bug comes to life, finds food and continues its life cycle. They do not tolerate frosts below -15 ⁰С and heat from 49 ⁰С.
Where bed bugs live
Where they are difficult to find and neutralize: inside furniture, under baseboards. From this follows the answer to the question: "What does a furniture bug look like?" This is another name for homemade.
They also hide in books and electronics. In old things, cracks in walls and floors. in animal cells. They live in dirty and clean rooms.
In the habitats of ticks there are adults, larvae, their skins, eggs and excrement.
Therefore, if you do not know what bed bugs look like, you need to carefully examine the secluded places in the bedroom and look for these clusters.
Ways to enter the house
- Through the cracks in the walls, ventilation hatches. An adult bug travels 1 m 25 cm in a minute, a larva - up to 25 cm. It can overcome up to 30 m in search of food.
- With old furniture.
- With any interior items, if they were in a room infested with bedbugs.
- Worn by family members or guests.
- Holding onto a pet.
Often the landlord does not know what bed bugs look like, does not notice thembites, and therefore does not fight them. In this case, their numbers increase rapidly. Through the cracks, the bugs penetrate into neighboring apartments. The hosts, having discovered unexpected guests, try to destroy them. But they come again and again, and their flow does not dry up.
How and when bedbugs bite
An anesthetic is released through a channel in the jaw. The person does not feel the bite and does not react to it. The bug begins to suck blood. One session of eating for a nymph lasts 3 minutes, for an adult - 8-10 minutes. Having eaten, the bug crawls into its habitat and digests food. After 15 minutes, the bite site begins to itch. But there is no longer an insect nearby. You may not notice that there was a linen bug. What does the bed look like in the morning? There are drops of blood on it from crushed bugs that did not have time to escape. The spots darken in the morning. During the day, "bloodsuckers" are not visible. At night (from 3 o'clock in the morning) the bugs come out to hunt. The skin and soft tissues are pierced with a proboscis until a capillary is found.
Nymphs do not know how to administer analgesics, so the injection is heard immediately. But their proboscis is very thin, and the bite may not be noticeable.
If there are a lot of bedbugs and they are hungry, they can attack with electric light and even during the day. There is an opinion that they bite people with delicate skin more and do not like the smell of tobacco.
What bed bug bites look like
After the bite of one individual, a path of several punctures remains, located one from the other at a distance of up to 4 cm. From each hole, the insect drinks a few drops of blood. If the bugs are just populating you, there may be several bites, which will make it difficult to make a diagnosis. But usually there are several dozen tracks.
Each of the bites is similar to a mosquito, but with a clear limiting line. The area near the penetration site quickly swells and turns red, severe burning and itching begins.
The distance between bites can be several millimeters. Then they merge into a continuous swollen and itchy spot. What does a bug bite look like? The photo below shows: in its place, red bumps with liquid form.
Bedbugs bite areas of the skin that are not covered by clothes: arms, legs, neck, bare back. They can't bite through fabric like a mosquito. And there will always be open spaces. After all, the bug works silently. You won't even hear a squeak like from a mosquito.
After a few hours, the swelling goes down, the bites stop itching. By evening, barely noticeable dots remain from them. But when scratched, which is very likely, blisters can remain for several weeks.
Bite damage
- Pain and itching do not allow you to sleep peacefully at night, and work during the day.
- Allergic reactions occur with hypersensitivity. The temperature may rise, Quincke's edema may occur, and sometimes anaphylactic shock.
- When an infection gets into the wounds, there is a high probability of abscesses.
- If a small child is bitten by bedbugs for a long time, he may develop anemia.
- These insects carry pathogens of typhus, smallpox, tularemia,hepatitis, tuberculosis. Some scientists believe that bedbugs can infect humans with them. But this has not been proven by science.
How to find out that bedbugs have appeared in the apartment
To understand who bites you, you need to find him. About 70% of people, mostly men, do not respond to bedbugs. They are not affected by the substance introduced by insects. But the bugs bite everyone. If in the morning you find small dark spots of blood on the bed, you need to beware. It could very well be bedbugs. To check, at night you should turn on the light abruptly and carefully examine yourself, the sheet, the walls near the bed.
A sharp smell of almonds or raspberries that appeared out of nowhere may also indicate the presence of bedbugs.
Differences from other insects
Bedbugs are often confused with cockroaches, lice, ants. After all, most of them, fortunately, are almost never found.
Main differences:
- bugs don't have nests, ants do;
- cockroaches have wings, bedbugs don't (more precisely, they have, but underdeveloped);
- bugs bite the open part of the body, lice bite the closed part;
- other insects have no smell.
How to recognize bed bug bites
Even doctors cannot always do this. But there are still some differences.
- Mosquito bites are not that painful. Bedbug tracks are redder, placed in lanes and in groups.
- A tick during a bite sits in the wound for a long time, burrowing into it with its head and pouring blood; the bug runs away.
- Bee and wasp stings are more painful.
- Bugsbite at night and indoors.
- When allergic to a red spot, there is no trace of the proboscis.
Bug bites everyone and always. They can move from apartment to apartment, from old furniture to new. They are hard to see, but even harder not to notice. As you can see, bedbugs are unpleasant insects. Their neighborhood brings not only painful sensations from bites. The realization that these creatures crawl all over you at night can cause depression or a nervous breakdown. Bed bugs won't go away on their own. Therefore, you need to try to get rid of them. Knowing what the bug looks like, it is easy to find the location of the parasite. It is better to destroy with the help of special means. Now there are effective drugs that do not have an unpleasant odor and are practically harmless to humans. The procedure can be done on your own or turn to professionals who are engaged in pest control.
