Speaker 1: What a night have I passed, not being able to
Speaker 1: get to sleep from animals crawling continually all over my
Speaker 1: poor dear person. If once I had got to sleep,
Speaker 1: I would then have defied them, but it was not practicable.
Speaker 1: But what were these animals? Why to know that? I
Speaker 1: looked this morning at the bed's head, and behold I
Speaker 1: saw some hundreds of bugs on their march home, full
Speaker 1: of prey. I dare say, though bugs do not like
Speaker 1: me in general, I suppose an overabundance of population had
Speaker 1: created a famine. For I was bit in three different places,
Speaker 1: all three on a very tender part, which I shall
Speaker 1: forbear mentioning, in which we Britons think is the best
Speaker 1: part of a bullock to make a steak of. At
Speaker 1: five this morning I left Capua, glad to get out
Speaker 1: of such a dirty hole. However, I deserved it for
Speaker 1: going to bed last night without looking, Whereas had I
Speaker 1: proceeded in my customary manner, laying myself down on a
Speaker 1: board bench or table, I should have slept like a hero.
Speaker 1: But Naples had made me luxurious, and this night was
Speaker 1: I repaid for it.
Speaker 2: I slept mercifully, not well, but some on looking, however,
Speaker 2: at my fair hand in the morning as it lay
Speaker 2: outside the bedclothes, I perceived it to be all what
Speaker 2: shall I say, elevated into inequalities significant of much. My
Speaker 2: pretty neck, too, especially the part of it Babby used
Speaker 2: to like to kiss, was all bitten. Infamously, I went
Speaker 2: this morning while a man was taking down my bedstead
Speaker 2: to look for the bugs, which were worse last night.
Speaker 2: Of course, having found what a rare creature they had,
Speaker 2: got to eat and investigated another lodging in a beautiful
Speaker 2: little garden villa, wise rejoicing in the characteristic name of
Speaker 2: Flora Cottage. God knows whether there be bugs in it.
Speaker 2: And now, dear, if you think my letter hardly worth
Speaker 2: the reading, remember that I am all bug bitten and bedeviled.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love these old timy like letters about their woes,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's funny because I think the language
Speaker 1: style that it's written in a so like it seems
Speaker 1: so quaint from now that it kind of glosses over
Speaker 1: the horrors that they're experiencing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes it sound like what And you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're being destroyed by bugs? Great? Will you sleep well?
Speaker 1: You sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But bug bitten and bedeviled is genuinely, I think my
Speaker 1: favorite phrase that I came across, and there are so
Speaker 1: many contenders, but it's just so good. It's just so good.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I found both of those quotes from a paper that
Speaker 1: is just chock full of old quotes about bedbugs, called
Speaker 1: the Bedbug and the Age of Elegance.
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Speaker 1: The first one was by Lord Herbert from September seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, and the second was by Jane Welsh Carlisle
Speaker 1: no relation as far as I'm aware, from eighteen forty three,
Speaker 1: and she had so many letters about bedbugs, an incredible number.
Speaker 2: Wow. Oh, poor lady. I'm hi. I'm Aaron Welsh, and
Speaker 2: I'm Erin Almond Updike And.
Speaker 1: This is this podcast will kill.
Speaker 2: You today we're talking about bedbugs. We are.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: They're horrible little creatures to in the way that they
Speaker 1: invade your life and make you miserable and make you
Speaker 1: have to throw out things and whatever. But also they're
Speaker 1: so fascinating, like they're really cool.
Speaker 2: They're cool little.
Speaker 1: Bugs, and I can't wait to talk about them more
Speaker 1: and learn about them more. But first it's quarantine any time.
Speaker 2: It. What are we drinking this week? We're drinking sleep tight. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, for those of you that may not know
Speaker 1: that that's a phrase, I feel like it's a pretty
Speaker 1: common saying, yeah, don't let the bedbugs bite. What is
Speaker 1: in sleep tight?
Speaker 2: Erin, It's a delicious little concoction with gin and blackberries,
Speaker 2: lime juice, pomegranate juice. Top it with a little tonic water.
Speaker 2: M fantastic, it really is. We'll post the full recipe
Speaker 2: for the quarantini as well as the non alcoholic plusy
Speaker 2: verita on our website. This podcast will fill you dot
Speaker 2: com and our social media channels. We certainly will.
Speaker 1: On our website, you can find the usual things that
Speaker 1: you can find on our website, transcripts, links to Goodreads
Speaker 1: list and our bookshop, dot Org, affiliate account, links to
Speaker 1: music by Bloodmobile, links to the sources for all of
Speaker 1: our episodes. You know there's more there, merch Patreon transcripts.
Speaker 1: Did I already say transcripts?
Speaker 2: I think I did. I think that means it's time.
Speaker 1: For us to move on to the content now unless
Speaker 1: we have any other business.
Speaker 2: No other business. Erin, let's get into it, shall we.
Speaker 1: Let's do it right after this break.
Speaker 2: So this is technically like jumping ahead all the way
Speaker 2: to the current status just a little bit. But I
Speaker 2: really liked this quote and I just feel like it
Speaker 2: gives so much context for like why this bedbug story
Speaker 2: is just so good. So I'm going to start with it.
Speaker 1: Okay, ready, Okay.
Speaker 2: So this is from a twenty twelve paper titled Bedbugs
Speaker 2: Clinical Relevance and Control Options. Not only was the reappearance
Speaker 2: of this pest unexpected, but the degree of the resurgence
Speaker 2: has almost been met with awe by many in the
Speaker 2: pest management industry. Awe.
Speaker 1: Aw But it's the unexpected part that gets me because
Speaker 1: I know, was it really unexpected?
Speaker 2: Was it? We'll get there eventually, Okay, okay, but first
Speaker 2: let's talk about bedbugs, shall we.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's why we're here.
Speaker 2: That's why we're here. We're going to talk about what
Speaker 2: these bugs even are, what they do to us, and
Speaker 2: that's it. That's all I'm going to talk about, and
Speaker 2: then we'll hear from you. Okay, it's a good start. Thanks.
Speaker 2: So bed bugs are obviously bugs, they're insects. They're in
Speaker 2: the family Submissidae, in the order Hemiptera, which are in
Speaker 2: fact true bugs, so you're allowed to call them bugs
Speaker 2: true bugs. We have talked about true bugs on this
Speaker 2: podcast before in our shagust disease episode. So bedbugs are
Speaker 2: in the same order, but are very different bugs than
Speaker 2: kissing bugs, which are what's spread shagus disease. However, like
Speaker 2: kissing bugs, sumisids or bed bugs are also hematophagous or
Speaker 2: blood feeding insects. Bedbugs are flightless, They're kind of little
Speaker 2: like oval shaped, very small, like one to three millimeters,
Speaker 2: and they are incredibly flat, like amazingly flat bodied. Both
Speaker 2: the males and the females have to blood feed on
Speaker 2: vertebrates in order to survive, and there are at least
Speaker 2: ninety ish maybe more species of sumisids, but only a
Speaker 2: handful tend to feed on humans. And the two that
Speaker 2: most commonly and most preferentially feed on humans and therefore
Speaker 2: are the most important for us as humans, are the
Speaker 2: common bedbug cimex like gularius and the topical bedbug Cimex hymipteris.
Speaker 2: So those are the two that I'm going to focus
Speaker 2: on entirely. So whenever I talk about bedbugs, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about those two species, the common and the tropical bedbug,
Speaker 2: but there are so many more, so many, and like
Speaker 2: our friends the kissing bugs that we talked about in
Speaker 2: Shawgus Disease episode, these insects feed on blood throughout all
Speaker 2: of their life stages. They don't metamorphosize like a lot
Speaker 2: of insects we know and love and talk about on
Speaker 2: this podcast more often, like flies or mosquitoes, or even
Speaker 2: ants and beetles and things. But instead, what bedbugs and
Speaker 2: all true bugs do is they go through nymphle in stars,
Speaker 2: and bedbugs have to blood feed at each one of
Speaker 2: these stages in order to grow into the next instar.
Speaker 2: How many stages are there in general five nymphal instars,
Speaker 2: and then so they have to feed at each one
Speaker 2: of those, and then the females have to feed every
Speaker 2: time in a order to make eggs as well, So
Speaker 2: they have to continually feed to be able to continue
Speaker 2: making eggs. And how often do they need to feed?
Speaker 2: Great question? In general they feed every few days or so,
Speaker 2: maybe every three to seven days. However, they can survive
Speaker 2: for very long periods of time, and exactly how long
Speaker 2: depends on what paper you read. And of course the
Speaker 2: environmental conditions and everything, but we're talking potentially months without
Speaker 2: blood feeding and they can just hang out and survive. Yep,
Speaker 2: you have that right. So those two species, Cimex lectularius
Speaker 2: and Cimex hymipdris, the common and the tropical bedbug, prefer
Speaker 2: human hosts, but they're not terribly picky, so they'll also
Speaker 2: feed on our pets and other domestic animals, even birds.
Speaker 2: They can cause a lot of damage to poultry flocks,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But in general, bed bugs tend to be
Speaker 2: attracted to their hosts both by the carbon dioxide that
Speaker 2: we breathe out as well as our body heat, and
Speaker 2: then a whole bunch of other potential chemicals and caramones
Speaker 2: that we give off that they can detect. And I
Speaker 2: don't know what these are, and I knew you might
Speaker 2: want to ask, but they can detect like a really
Speaker 2: wide variety of chemicals. So we're potentially emitting a bunch
Speaker 2: of different little things while we sleep that they're attracted to.
Speaker 2: A bed bugs are you would think, like the least
Speaker 2: impressive movement wise, Like they can't fly, they can't jump,
Speaker 2: they just walk.
Speaker 1: They can scuttle. They can scuttle very fast.
Speaker 2: They are very fast, and they can walk a surprisingly
Speaker 2: long distance for how incredibly tiny they are. And so
Speaker 2: the way that they generally live their life is that,
Speaker 2: like I mentioned, they feed just every few days, and
Speaker 2: then once they have a nice big blood meal, they
Speaker 2: scuttle off and they go and rest, and they lie
Speaker 2: dormant while they digest that blood meal. And because they
Speaker 2: do not live on us like fleas or lice, they
Speaker 2: generally are found on our bedding or chairs or upholstery,
Speaker 2: where they can hide during the day and come out
Speaker 2: only at night to feed. These bugs are photophobic, which
Speaker 2: is part of why they like a nighttime snack, and
Speaker 2: their peak feeding tends to be between one am and
Speaker 2: five am, which also happens to be when we tend
Speaker 2: to sleep the most deeply.
Speaker 1: I just love it, I know, I mean, you have
Speaker 1: to admire it.
Speaker 2: You have to. How can you not. Oh, Then, once
Speaker 2: they've had their fill, they crawl or scuttle on back
Speaker 2: to their nests, which are called refugia.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of cute, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I love it. And they do aggregate there because they
Speaker 2: release a whole bunch of pheromones for each other to
Speaker 2: help them find these little nests, these little refugia, which
Speaker 2: also I read helps them with like water conservation. Love that.
Speaker 1: Oh, that is amazing.
Speaker 2: Having a whole bunch of them altogether, you know, rather
Speaker 2: than like living all alone. Yeah. And in addition to
Speaker 2: having these aggregation pheromones, bedbugs also have alarm pheromones. So
Speaker 2: if you find their little abodes and then you start
Speaker 2: killing them and it smells really bad or weird, or
Speaker 2: some descriptions say sickly sweet, that is the alarm pheromones
Speaker 2: that these bedbugs are releasing to warn any other little
Speaker 2: nests or refugias guttle away, scuttle away they found us.
Speaker 1: That is so interesting because I came across several quotes
Speaker 1: describing how horrible they smelled or how distinctive they smelled,
Speaker 1: and it never occurred to me to wonder why they smelled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in general, at least from what it seems
Speaker 2: is a lot of that smell, It's possible that maybe
Speaker 2: some of it is those aggregation pheromones that were smelling,
Speaker 2: you know, if it's just like they're all the time.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of it most of the
Speaker 2: time is in the context of them releasing alarm pheromones.
Speaker 2: So we found their nest, and now they're releasing all
Speaker 2: these pheromones, and now you smell it for the first time.
Speaker 1: That is incredible. I know.
Speaker 2: The other way that you can find their little nests
Speaker 2: is poop. They're poop fecal spotting, so little black, little
Speaker 2: dots in the corners and crevices of mattresses or bed
Speaker 2: frames or walls. Those are usually one of the first
Speaker 2: signs or indications of a bed bug infestation. Rather than
Speaker 2: finding the bugs themselves, it's usually fecal spotting first, and
Speaker 2: then you have to look really hard to find the bugs.
Speaker 2: Female bedbugs. I tried to get a handle on just
Speaker 2: how many eggs they lay, because it seems very important
Speaker 2: when we're looking at bedbug infestations, because they are impressively
Speaker 2: good at spreading. And yet I was not all that
Speaker 2: impressed with how many eggs an individual female can lay.
Speaker 2: One of the papers that I read said that they
Speaker 2: lay five to eight eggs a week adult females for
Speaker 2: eighteen weeks. That's like surprisingly low, right and per air
Speaker 2: and math, that's only like ninety to one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty four eggs, which is not that much. But then
Speaker 2: other papers suggested it's more like two hundred to five
Speaker 2: hundred eggs in a lifetime, which is more okay, but
Speaker 2: still not as much as I expect for an insect
Speaker 2: that can spread as rapidly as we know that it can.
Speaker 1: I wonder because when we think of insects, we think
Speaker 1: of them laying or arthropods laying tons and tons of eggs,
Speaker 1: sort of like in a bet hedging strategy. Right, ten
Speaker 1: percent of them survived to be larva, ten percent of
Speaker 1: them survived to be nymphs, et cetera. Right, So what
Speaker 1: is the in star survival rate or mortality rate for
Speaker 1: bed bugs? Do they survive better because there are fewer?
Speaker 1: What is maternal care? Like? I have so many questions
Speaker 1: now I have I have.
Speaker 2: Those same questions. I don't have answers for them. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a really good question. You would think maybe maybe
Speaker 2: it is quite a lot higher because they live in
Speaker 2: these little refugeia. Right, So maybe because they're living in
Speaker 2: such close association with hosts, maybe they have a better
Speaker 2: chance at survival maybe, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it was an It was an interesting number. So
Speaker 2: a few hundred eggs yea, and yet and just wait.
Speaker 2: And for those of you who wonder how long are
Speaker 2: they biting me? For an adult tends to take about
Speaker 2: ten to twenty minutes to become fully engorged. So they're
Speaker 2: biting you every couple of days, ten to twenty minutes
Speaker 2: at a time, et cetera. Hundreds of bugs laying hundreds
Speaker 2: of eggs. Goldkah, yeah, love that. There was also, I
Speaker 2: will say, in the bed bug literature, aside from the
Speaker 2: human clinical side of things, which is what I'm about
Speaker 2: to get into a little bit more, there is a
Speaker 2: lot of very interesting stuff in the literature about what
Speaker 2: I guess is one of the other very interesting parts
Speaker 2: of bedbug biology, and that is that the way that
Speaker 2: they mate, which is very different than most bugs, and
Speaker 2: this is that the males pierce the females abdominal wall
Speaker 2: in order to inseminate them, not the genital tract directly.
Speaker 2: This process is called traumatic insemination because it's literally causing
Speaker 2: direct trauma to the abdominal wall of the female.
Speaker 1: Two questions, Okay, is traumatic insemination common across all bedbug species?
Speaker 1: And the second question is what consequences does this have
Speaker 1: besides insemination?
Speaker 2: Great questions. So whether all species of bed bugs do this,
Speaker 2: I don't actually know because I really only read about
Speaker 2: these two species, but I'm pretty sure that this is
Speaker 2: common across semisids in general. Yeah, Now, what consequences does
Speaker 2: this have? Kind of a lot, And in fact, it
Speaker 2: has been shown that this process can actually reduce survival
Speaker 2: in the females, which is fascinating. It has also led
Speaker 2: to the evolution of an entirely new you like, paragenital tract,
Speaker 2: which is still though not actually used for insemination. It's
Speaker 2: generally still the abdominal wall, but it has led to
Speaker 2: really strong sexual selection in various ways. Like what, I
Speaker 2: didn't dive deep into anything beyond that because there's simply
Speaker 2: too much other ground to cover.
Speaker 1: How on Earth did this evolve? Oh, Aaron, I don't
Speaker 1: know how the answer to that well. And also, so
Speaker 1: the genital tract is used for depositing eggs, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's still how eggs are going to be
Speaker 2: laid is through the genital tract, but it's not how
Speaker 2: insemination occurs.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, yeah, I mean I knew that, but it's
Speaker 1: just still it's mind blowing.
Speaker 2: I know, And it's really it's really weird. Yeah, especially
Speaker 2: that it can reduce survival. Anyways, that's all I've got.
Speaker 2: I got papers you can read more. People can get
Speaker 2: really into this and maybe we'll get some cool fun
Speaker 2: answers out it. Let's move on to what we tend
Speaker 2: to focus on on this podcast, which is like what
Speaker 2: happens to us humans? Yeah? But what about humans? What
Speaker 2: about us when we get bitten by these bugs? No doubt,
Speaker 2: the most common thing that anyone is going to get
Speaker 2: from a bedbug bite is localized skin reactions, meaning we're itchy.
Speaker 2: So sorry in advance, everyone's going to be itching for
Speaker 2: the rest of the time that I'm talking if you're
Speaker 2: not already. So, how does this process of feeding actually work?
Speaker 2: And why do we get so itchy from it? Like
Speaker 2: pretty much all Hemiptera bedbugs have these mouthparts that are
Speaker 2: made specifically for piercing and sucking. Other Hymiptera use this
Speaker 2: type of mouthpart for piercing plants and sucking out their sap,
Speaker 2: or for piercing the exoskeleton of other bugs and sucking
Speaker 2: out their guts. Bedbugs use them for piercing our skin
Speaker 2: and sucking out our blood. So they have these very
Speaker 2: fine little needle mouths. They stick them into us. They
Speaker 2: inject into us their own saliva, which contains a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of proteins, many of which contain anticoagulant properties, which
Speaker 2: makes sense. Some of these proteins help with vasodilation so
Speaker 2: that they get more localized blood flow to the area.
Speaker 2: Some of them inhibit platelet aggregation and activation, which is
Speaker 2: the first step of our clotting cascade. See our hemophilia
Speaker 2: episode pre details. Some of them actually inhibit factor ten,
Speaker 2: which is fascinating, which is another part of our clotting cascade,
Speaker 2: in order to just further delay blood clot formation. I
Speaker 2: just it's really impressive stuff. It's unclear if anything that
Speaker 2: they inject serves to unesthetize our skin, but these are
Speaker 2: teeny tiny little needle mouths, so even if it doesn't,
Speaker 2: it's unlikely in general that we probably feel this because
Speaker 2: of just how small those needles are. Then they suck
Speaker 2: up blood, withdraw their little needle, and crawl back to
Speaker 2: their refuge. What you may see after the fact right
Speaker 2: away are maybe little pinpoint flex of blood on our sheets,
Speaker 2: but very often you won't see any evidence that you
Speaker 2: got bitten by bedbugs. Overnight until your skin reacts to
Speaker 2: it at a future point. Now, one big question is
Speaker 2: how long does it take to have a reaction to
Speaker 2: bedbug bites? And that is not as easy of a
Speaker 2: question to answer as you might think. A lot of
Speaker 2: the literature says that it might take many days, like
Speaker 2: several days, But it really depends person to person, as
Speaker 2: I'll get into like what each person since specific reaction
Speaker 2: might be. And in some people it's very possible to
Speaker 2: have a reaction within twenty four to forty eight hours. Okay,
Speaker 2: so it's not very clear cut if bites, for example,
Speaker 2: appear on your body when exactly the bites actually occurred.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, like if you just came back from a trip
Speaker 1: and a week later, you're like, I have bites? Are
Speaker 1: they from the last hotel I stayed in? Right?
Speaker 2: Or are they yeah last night?
Speaker 1: Or did I bring them back from the hotel that
Speaker 1: I stayed in another with me?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 1: Are there certain parts of you that bed bugs like
Speaker 1: to bite?
Speaker 2: Let's get into it, shall we. Yeah, yes, so let's
Speaker 2: talk about what it looks like where you find them,
Speaker 2: et cetera. If someone is going to have a reaction
Speaker 2: to these bedbug bites, which not everyone does what you
Speaker 2: usually see initially are and by little, I mean like
Speaker 2: two to five millimeter so pretty small flat red spots.
Speaker 2: And yes, it is slightly more common erin that you
Speaker 2: might see these spots on your arms, or your legs,
Speaker 2: or your neck or your face. This is not for
Speaker 2: any other real reason other than clothing can really help
Speaker 2: protect against bites. So arms, legs, neck, face, these are
Speaker 2: the places that are most likely uncovered in bed. Anywhere
Speaker 2: that's uncovered can potentially get bitten. These little flat red
Speaker 2: spots can then progress over time to these round or kind.
Speaker 1: Of oval shaped wheels.
Speaker 2: Kind of like hivy, looking like slightly raised bumps, though
Speaker 2: they're not true hives, but they kind of can look
Speaker 2: a lot like hives. They can actually enlarge quite a bit,
Speaker 2: so now instead of looking at little two to five
Speaker 2: millimeter dots, might have two to six centimeter wheels, and
Speaker 2: they can be really really itchy. And if you have
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of these bites, then these individual wheels
Speaker 2: can kind of coalesce into what looks like a more
Speaker 2: widespread rash. And the more that you scratch at it,
Speaker 2: the more that it can exacerbate this trauma and not
Speaker 2: only spread the what looks like the rash and the itching,
Speaker 2: but also can make it harder to see what's really
Speaker 2: like going on underneath on the skin itself because of
Speaker 2: all this scratching.
Speaker 1: And with repeated exposures. Do you get more sensitive to
Speaker 1: bedbug bites?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, exactly so I'll get into it a little
Speaker 2: bit more later. But the truth is that we don't
Speaker 2: understand the pathophysiology of this response, like why do some
Speaker 2: people have really severe reactions to bedbug bites and other
Speaker 2: people might be living with bed bugs for months and
Speaker 2: never even really know, right, it's very very rare, but
Speaker 2: sometimes people can have even more severe reactions where they
Speaker 2: end up with systemic symptoms like fevers and feeling really
Speaker 2: cruddy from how many bug bites they've gotten. And we
Speaker 2: don't really understand this reaction itself. But there is some
Speaker 2: evidence at least that it's maybe in part like an
Speaker 2: allergic response, where we have an elevation in IgE which
Speaker 2: mediates a lot of our allergic responses and our hypersensitivity reactions.
Speaker 2: So yes, there is data, though the studies are not great,
Speaker 2: that suggests that with recurrent exposure you're more and more
Speaker 2: likely to have a reaction of some kind. So study
Speaker 2: suggests that like, if you give someone enough bites, eventually
Speaker 2: almost everyone will develop some kind of a reaction to
Speaker 2: bed bug bites. But with a single exposure, maybe less
Speaker 2: than fifty percent of people will have any kind of
Speaker 2: a reaction at all. Okay, And like I mentioned, even
Speaker 2: the timeframe of how soon after a bite you might
Speaker 2: develop that reaction is a little bit unclear. So if
Speaker 2: it's a very severe reaction, then maybe within twenty four
Speaker 2: to forty eight hours you might see the initial little
Speaker 2: red dots that then progress over a number of hours
Speaker 2: or a couple of days. But if someone has only
Speaker 2: been bitten a couple of times in their life, then
Speaker 2: maybe it is a few days before you notice anything.
Speaker 2: But it all kind of depends on not only how
Speaker 2: many exposures someone has had, but how sensitive they are,
Speaker 2: maybe how much of a hypersensitivity reaction they have at baseline,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Often in the literature, bedbug bites
Speaker 2: are described as being linear, so like all in a
Speaker 2: little line along your arm or along your leg.
Speaker 1: So they feed and then they move, and they feed
Speaker 1: and then they move and then they feed.
Speaker 2: I love this question almost certainly. No, okay, And I'll
Speaker 2: link to a paper that proposed like several different possible
Speaker 2: hypotheses as to why we sometimes see these linear bites
Speaker 2: like all in a little line or a lot of
Speaker 2: times they're described as in groups of three, which is
Speaker 2: called breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's really cute.
Speaker 2: Isn't it. It's horrific, but you it's horrible, but yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the proposed hypotheses was, oh, are they are
Speaker 2: they biting and then maybe getting disturbed so then they
Speaker 2: have to move a little ways and then biting again.
Speaker 2: But no, the best hypothesis that I saw for this
Speaker 2: is that it's most likely groups or bunches of bedbugs
Speaker 2: that are all kind of lining up and biting you
Speaker 2: all at once.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, buffet style.
Speaker 2: Buffet style, especially because when bedbugs feed, they remember that
Speaker 2: they're hiding, say in the corner of your mattress all day.
Speaker 2: Right then you lay down for bed in your tank
Speaker 2: top with your shoulder exposed. You're sleeping on your back,
Speaker 2: so your shoulder is like, you know, pushed up against
Speaker 2: your mattress, and these bed bugs crawl out from underneath
Speaker 2: the underside of your mattress in the corner, and they
Speaker 2: crawl up and your shoulder is in contact with the bedding.
Speaker 2: These bugs like to maintain contact with the bedding during feeding,
Speaker 2: so they're going to all kind of line up in
Speaker 2: a place that's easy for them to reach and just bite, bite,
Speaker 2: bite you all the way along. And so that's one
Speaker 2: of I think the kind of best hypotheses is that
Speaker 2: you have groups of bed bugs. Remember they're secreting aggregation pheromones.
Speaker 2: They're telling their friends, Hey, I found a great spot,
Speaker 2: so everyone's coming up. They're having a buffet where they
Speaker 2: can have close contact to the bedding so they can
Speaker 2: hop off when they need to, not literally hop, but
Speaker 2: just you know, release and then crawl away. And that's
Speaker 2: most likely why we see sometimes these linear patterns. But
Speaker 2: it's often also that there is no pattern whatsoever to
Speaker 2: these bites. There's just a bunch of bites everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because I feel like competition within a
Speaker 1: species is often such a strong driver of behavior, of
Speaker 1: certain adaptations of everything. But with bedbugs, it seems like
Speaker 1: teamwork has been decided upon as like the answer the
Speaker 1: dream work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's just a hypothesis. I don't know
Speaker 2: that we have a lot of data to say that
Speaker 2: that's definitely what's happening here. But the last kind of
Speaker 2: reaction that some people can also have is again, in
Speaker 2: more severe cases, you can end up with kind of
Speaker 2: blistery rash more like bloody blisters, or just like fluid
Speaker 2: filled blisters again, if you're having a really really severe reaction.
Speaker 2: In truth, bedbug bites are very difficult to distinguish from
Speaker 2: really any other bug bite, and you really have to
Speaker 2: find the bugs themselves to be sure that what you're
Speaker 2: dealing with is actually bedbug bites and not other bug
Speaker 2: bites or scabies, which is very commonly confused with bed
Speaker 2: bugs or allergies to something else like the new laundry
Speaker 2: detergent that you switched to, because this could look a
Speaker 2: lot like an allergic reaction or a staph infection, although
Speaker 2: bites like this could get superimposed with things like a
Speaker 2: staph infection, so it is difficult to diagnose bed bug bites.
Speaker 1: Is it not common then, to ever feel the bed
Speaker 1: bugs bite? Because I feel like our first hand accounts
Speaker 1: were very much like I am feeling them. They're crawling
Speaker 1: all over me. That's certainly what I read in doing research.
Speaker 1: It's a good question.
Speaker 2: In general, these bugs are tending to bite when we
Speaker 2: are asleep and generally not coming out until people are
Speaker 2: probably quite asleep. Now, insomnia or sleep disturbance is very
Speaker 2: common in bedbug infestations. This can sometimes be caused by
Speaker 2: the actual like itch scratch cycle, where you've had so
Speaker 2: many bites that you're itchy. Do you get awoken by
Speaker 2: this itching? Then you wake up, you scratch it. That
Speaker 2: exacerbates the reaction so you can't get back to sleep.
Speaker 2: So then if those bed bugs are there, are you
Speaker 2: feeling the bed bugs or do you just know that
Speaker 2: you have had bed bugs? Or you think that you
Speaker 2: have bedbugs? So you're feeling things that are itching, but
Speaker 2: it's hard to know is that really the bugs or
Speaker 2: is it is it not? I don't think that it's
Speaker 2: impossible to feel these bugs. They are again like one
Speaker 2: to three millimeters, so they're definitely visible and you could
Speaker 2: potentially feel that. But in general, they're biting when we
Speaker 2: are asleep asleep, so you're probably not really feeling them.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, okay, which is again why it can be
Speaker 2: so hard and then who knows how long after you've
Speaker 2: been bitten, you have a reaction to it, you have
Speaker 2: a visible, you know, mark from it. So that's like
Speaker 2: most of bedbugs.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take us back to the beginning, okay,
Speaker 1: where you said that bed bugs can crawl scuttle a
Speaker 1: surprisingly long distance. What is that distance?
Speaker 2: One paper that I read said up to one hundred feet.
Speaker 2: I don't know how common that is, but definitely like
Speaker 2: numbers of feet, Like they can go from say, like
Speaker 2: the corner of your room up onto your bed and
Speaker 2: then onto you. Yeah, your face says it all.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah.
Speaker 2: In general, though, they're not probably crawling all around your
Speaker 2: house unless they have to if you're not like sleeping
Speaker 2: in the same spot every night. The way that they
Speaker 2: tend to be distributed longer distance wise, is they will
Speaker 2: take up residence in your luggage, in your sheets, and
Speaker 2: be moved from room to room, say in a hotel,
Speaker 2: for example. They will be you know, on furniture or pillows,
Speaker 2: things that get moved around room to room, apartment to apartment,
Speaker 2: ship to ship on a cruise ship.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about some of the things that
Speaker 1: affect their longevity in these environments. I know that adult
Speaker 1: bugs can live for a very long time without having
Speaker 1: a blood meal, but I'm assuming that like many other
Speaker 1: arthropods that feed on blood, they're affected by humidity and
Speaker 1: temperature primarily.
Speaker 2: Definitely, so humidity, temperature, environmental conditions will affect not only
Speaker 2: how long they live in general, but also how long
Speaker 2: it takes for them to hatch and then develop into adults.
Speaker 2: But the other thing to know is that these are
Speaker 2: bugs that are very well adapted to human dwellings, which
Speaker 2: we often keep at relatively constant temperatures and honestly just
Speaker 2: make it really really easy for them to live for
Speaker 2: a long time. So in cooler conditions than they can
Speaker 2: live for potentially up to a year or more if
Speaker 2: we keep our houses warmer. Then maybe they're living for
Speaker 2: just a handful of months, like four four and a
Speaker 2: half months or so, and taking only a few weeks
Speaker 2: or a couple of months to actually develop fully into adults.
Speaker 2: But certainly they are susceptible to environmental conditions. They also
Speaker 2: can't survive good vacuuming. Okay, putting them in a vacuum
Speaker 2: bag and then freezers will kill them. Hot hot water
Speaker 2: like washing all of your things with super hot water
Speaker 2: and then putting them in the dryer. Those things will
Speaker 2: kill them, so they're not like like a pre on.
Speaker 2: It's like impossible to denature, right.
Speaker 1: So I guess this is kind of because this isn't
Speaker 1: our usual fair at this point you would normally talk
Speaker 1: about treatment. Yeah, but are you going to talk about
Speaker 1: like pesticides or like what what are you going to
Speaker 1: talk about?
Speaker 2: No? I don't. I don't really have anything, honestly, Like
Speaker 2: you can treat the itching right like topical steroids, systemic
Speaker 2: and histamines its relief. That's that's all I have in
Speaker 2: terms of treatment. I'll talk more. Well, maybe I won't
Speaker 2: really actually, so let's talk about it now. I was
Speaker 2: gonna say I'll talk more about how you get rid
Speaker 2: of bed bugs later on, but I won't.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: What I will talk about is how like insecticides aren't
Speaker 2: going to do you pretty much any good because bed
Speaker 2: bugs have incredible resistance to pretty all of the insecticides.
Speaker 1: That we use. That ship has sailed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it really is like identifying that these bugs exist,
Speaker 2: finding their refuges, and then cleaning the heck out of
Speaker 2: them in order to get rid of them, which is
Speaker 2: really the only thing that you can do to actually
Speaker 2: treat the issue of bed bugs. Simple enough, simple enough,
Speaker 2: it's not. But yeah, it's not simple at all, And
Speaker 2: as I'll mention later on, it's also incredibly costly, especially
Speaker 2: when we look at how quickly these can spread and
Speaker 2: therefore how intensive the efforts have to be in order
Speaker 2: to eliminate them, especially when we're looking at things like
Speaker 2: apartment buildings where you have a lot of housing units
Speaker 2: in one building, hospitals, hotels, cruise ships, like any place
Speaker 2: where you have a lot of people sharing space, especially
Speaker 2: sharing bedding. It's it's a major major issue trying to
Speaker 2: kind of actually get rid of all of these. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's primarily bed bugs and the issues that they
Speaker 2: cause for us as humans. Aaron, Yes, Aaron, tell me
Speaker 2: have they always been with us? I'm guessing I have
Speaker 2: some guesses here. How did we get here to where
Speaker 2: we are today? Tell me about these little bugs?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot to tell, so I better get
Speaker 1: started right after this break. I think that the best
Speaker 1: way to talk about the evolutionary history of bedbugs is
Speaker 1: to first talk about what we used to think we knew,
Speaker 1: so that we can then appreciate how that history has
Speaker 1: almost been completely rewritten in the past few years.
Speaker 2: Oh love HM.
Speaker 1: So, like you mentioned Aaron, when we talk about bedbugs
Speaker 1: in the context of human infestations, we are generally talking
Speaker 1: about these three species you talked about, the two the
Speaker 1: common bedbug, and a tropical bedbug Cimex leticularius and Cimex hemipteris.
Speaker 1: And then there's also mentioned commonly as like a human
Speaker 1: biting bedbug is Leptocymex bouty. And these are three species,
Speaker 1: like you said, out of a family of over one
Speaker 1: hundred species. I think at this point, what do these
Speaker 1: other species of bedbugs do well? They all feed on blood,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, that blood either belongs to waterbirds, other birds,
Speaker 1: or bats. But if you look at the evolutionary relationships
Speaker 1: among all of these other species in the Simysidae family,
Speaker 1: stuff like which species are oldest, which are more closely
Speaker 1: related than others, which evolved most recently. What researchers found
Speaker 1: by looking at these things is that the oldest of
Speaker 1: these species, the one that is closest to the forms
Speaker 1: that are now extinct. They feed on bats, which would
Speaker 1: reasonably point towards bats acting as the earliest hosts of
Speaker 1: all bedbugs. So the story would go that ancient bedbugs
Speaker 1: encountered bats and fed on their blood occasionally until occasionally
Speaker 1: became obligately as the bedbugs began to rely on these
Speaker 1: mammals for their food. Got it, And so the story
Speaker 1: continues that when early humans begin moving into caves for shelter,
Speaker 1: bedbugs were already there feeding on bats. And then these
Speaker 1: bed bugs were like, oh, hey, it's free real estate.
Speaker 1: Here's a brand new host that we can take advantage of.
Speaker 1: And then as ancient humans evolved into different species and
Speaker 1: then spread across the globe, they took bedbugs with them,
Speaker 1: which subsequently evolved into different species. That is how the
Speaker 1: story went for a very long time. But that story
Speaker 1: is now a or so we thought type of story.
Speaker 2: Oo.
Speaker 1: So there's a paper from twenty nineteen in Current Biology
Speaker 1: by roth at All that puts it pretty plainly in
Speaker 1: the title quote bedbugs evolved before their bat hosts and
Speaker 1: did not co species with ancient humans the end. Do
Speaker 1: I need to say anything more?
Speaker 2: No, except maybe like what right you're out?
Speaker 1: I may not need to, but I will. So it
Speaker 1: turns out that the earliest fossil of a close relative
Speaker 1: of bedbugs, would put the origin of bedbugs back to
Speaker 1: about one hundred million years ago. So like dinosaurs, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I love when we talk about bugs feeding on dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: I know, I know we should somehow try to find
Speaker 1: a way to do a whole episode about it. I
Speaker 1: don't know how, especially.
Speaker 2: A bed bug, because there's so little aaron, how do
Speaker 2: they pierce dino skin?
Speaker 1: That's a great question.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But the other really cool thing is
Speaker 1: that they probably did, because when these bedbugs evolved one
Speaker 1: hundred million years ago, they were already pros at blood feeding. What,
Speaker 1: they were already obligate blood feeders, it appears, rather than
Speaker 1: you know, as we had thought, sort of slowly incorporating
Speaker 1: it into their lifestyle. What and so that means that
Speaker 1: their ancestor also already specialized on blood. But whose blood?
Speaker 1: Whose blood we don't know, we'll never know. Probably not bats,
Speaker 1: unless we're totally wrong about bat evolution. Since the earliest
Speaker 1: known bats didn't emerge until I read around thirty million
Speaker 1: years after bedbugs did. That's a long time.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So which animal or animals served as the earliest
Speaker 1: host of bedbugs total mystery at this point. But from
Speaker 1: those mystery hosts, bedbugs found their way onto bats, and
Speaker 1: then onto birds, and then back to bats, or from
Speaker 1: one species of bats to another species of bats, and
Speaker 1: so on, diversifying along the way. And so the three
Speaker 1: bedbug species that feed on humans arose as part of
Speaker 1: this diversification process, and this species themselves were already established
Speaker 1: before they started feeding on humans. In fact, these species
Speaker 1: emerged around five to ten million years before any member
Speaker 1: of the Homo genus existed.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, old, very old.
Speaker 1: Unlike this previous story that we used to tell about
Speaker 1: bed bugs and humans and bats and so on, the
Speaker 1: evolution of these generalist bedbug species didn't happen alongside ancient
Speaker 1: human evolution into new species, but rather that these bedbug
Speaker 1: species were introduced to humans in three independent events. When
Speaker 1: those events occurred, and which early human species were first
Speaker 1: parasitized we still don't know that, or don't know that
Speaker 1: yet maybe, But what does this mean for us today
Speaker 1: in terms of how we deal with bedbugs? Probably not much.
Speaker 1: That's more about insecticides and creative treatment strategies and so on.
Speaker 1: But it does bring up many interesting questions about the
Speaker 1: human history of these bedbugs, how co evolution of humans
Speaker 1: and bedbugs didn't seem to happen in the ways that
Speaker 1: we thought it did, as well as something I find
Speaker 1: super interesting, which is what drives host switching, Like why
Speaker 1: does a bedbug feed on one species and then feed
Speaker 1: on a different species, or why does a bedbug start
Speaker 1: to feed on multiple species? And then these trade offs
Speaker 1: between being a parasite that specializes on just one species
Speaker 1: or a parasite that's a generalist. That's like, I want
Speaker 1: to feed on everything. And then can it happen where
Speaker 1: a specialist becomes a generalist and then goes back to
Speaker 1: a specialist, Like there's so much there that's absolutely fascinating,
Speaker 1: and that is honestly, like, bedbugs are such a group
Speaker 1: of organisms to study that like host switching and specialists
Speaker 1: and generalist trade offs, and I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: But that I mean, I could spend the whole episode
Speaker 1: talking about that aspect of it, but I think I
Speaker 1: probably should talk a little bit about the human history
Speaker 1: of these little bugs, the beginnings of the long and
Speaker 1: fruitful and frustrating relationship between humans and bed bugs. That
Speaker 1: might be a bit murky still, but we can speculate
Speaker 1: at least that as humans settled in larger groups and
Speaker 1: built permanent or semi permanent shelters, bed bugs were there
Speaker 1: to keep them company, or at least they arrived shortly
Speaker 1: after adapting to the diurnal sleeping patterns of humans, which
Speaker 1: is so cool, so amazing. Yeah, as well as are
Speaker 1: less hairy bodies compared to bats. Oh wow, so like
Speaker 1: they had to crawl scuttle differently.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: I mean everything about it is uugh.
Speaker 2: I never thought about that, but yeah, it's so cool.
Speaker 1: In terms of archaeological evidence, the oldest evidence of bedbugs
Speaker 1: cohabitating with humans dates back to around thirty five hundred
Speaker 1: years ago in ancient Egypt. So there were preserved bedbugs
Speaker 1: that were identified as cimex leticularius found in a city
Speaker 1: called Akatatin in the times before King tut In, the
Speaker 1: place where tomb builders and guards likely slept, so like,
Speaker 1: I'm a sleeping chamber and they hung around, as evidenced
Speaker 1: by a papyrus from about one thousand years later that
Speaker 1: described a spell to keep them away. And the bedbugs
Speaker 1: also spread, popping up in what is now Iraq by
Speaker 1: at least the ninth century. They appear in ancient religious
Speaker 1: texts such as A is a Talmud. If we take
Speaker 1: the archaeological samples from ancient Egypt as sort of the
Speaker 1: origin point and then also use that in combination with
Speaker 1: like these references in ancient texts to bedbugs, we can
Speaker 1: assume we can guess that the bedbug spread from ancient
Speaker 1: Egypt to the Middle East and then to Europe and Asia.
Speaker 1: And many of these ancient texts talked about bedbugs the
Speaker 1: way you might expect them to the way that we
Speaker 1: talk about bedbugs today as bothersome pests, how to look
Speaker 1: for signs of bedbugs, how to keep them away, and
Speaker 1: so on. But at least a few of these ancient
Speaker 1: scholars had a kind of when life gives you lemons,
Speaker 1: make lemonade outlook stop it Like instead of lemons, it
Speaker 1: was like, when life gives you bedbugs, make a potion
Speaker 1: with meat and beans or wine to treat fevers, cure
Speaker 1: steake bites, or get leeches off of you.
Speaker 2: Like from the bugs. Like you take the bugs and
Speaker 2: you make them into a potion.
Speaker 1: Yep, ground bed bugs, ground up bed bugs. Huh, I
Speaker 1: love it. The beans kind of it cracked me up,
Speaker 1: And I think that. Pliny the Elder also was skeptical
Speaker 1: of the beans, but he did support the use of
Speaker 1: bedbugs to treat ear aches by burning the bugs, combining
Speaker 1: their ashes with rose oil, and injecting it into what yourself.
Speaker 1: I guess your ear canal.
Speaker 2: I don't know, not your ear. I have a real
Speaker 2: thing about bugs and ears.
Speaker 1: I know this about you.
Speaker 2: So I ooh, that gets me.
Speaker 1: You know, we love these ancient cures, but in the
Speaker 1: case of bedbugs, they weren't just ancient cures.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The eighteen ninety six edition of the American Homeopathic Pharmacopeia
Speaker 1: includes a recipe for a tincture eighteen ninety six of
Speaker 1: bedbugs to treat malaria. Other uses of bedbugs included to
Speaker 1: treat constipation, coughs, hemorrhoids, liver complaints. What is a liver complaint?
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to know, skin ailments, frequent yawning, among
Speaker 1: other like many other things.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I literally don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm guessing it's because they were there and
Speaker 1: they were abundant, and it was like, surely there must
Speaker 1: be a reason why these things exist anyway, Okay, The
Speaker 1: ways that you could ward off bedbugs in the ancient
Speaker 1: world were just as inventive as the uses for the critters.
Speaker 1: So according to the Greek philosopher Democritus around four hundred BCE,
Speaker 1: you should hang the feet of a hair or a
Speaker 1: stag at the foot of your bed to keep the
Speaker 1: bed bugs away. Okay, an alternative solution would be to
Speaker 1: hang a bear skin or put a bowl of water
Speaker 1: under your bed while you're traveling. Speaking of traveling, of course,
Speaker 1: the bedbug was a very frequent and successful hitchhiker. So
Speaker 1: it arrived in Greece at least by four hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty BCE, Italy by seventy seven c China by six
Speaker 1: hundred CE, Japan around the same time, Germany by the
Speaker 1: eleventh century, France by the thirteenth, England by the sixteenth,
Speaker 1: and onto the Americas, with some of the earliest trips
Speaker 1: of boats going over there. As the bedbug spread across
Speaker 1: the world, you know, it's not like it was a
Speaker 1: few bugs that popped up here and there. The bedbug
Speaker 1: is an incredibly successful establisher, right Like, once it got
Speaker 1: brought to a new place, it survived. It thrived really
Speaker 1: to the point where it became so prevalent in their
Speaker 1: new place of residence that they earned their fair share
Speaker 1: of names like these different local names that were used
Speaker 1: to describe these bugs. So let's get into a couple
Speaker 1: of these names, okay. In ancient Greece, the word they
Speaker 1: used was corus CoRIS, which means to bite and allegedly
Speaker 1: gave rise to the name for coriander because when you
Speaker 1: crush the fresh leaves and seeds, it's supposed to give
Speaker 1: off a smell like that of crushed bed bugs.
Speaker 2: Fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The name cimex was given to the bugs by
Speaker 1: scholars in ancient Rome, cimex meaning bug, and later, of course,
Speaker 1: that would become its genus name, along with the species
Speaker 1: name liticularius, which was supplied by Linnaeus in the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and reticularius translates to quote of the bed or of
Speaker 1: the couch bug, of the bed bug, of the bed
Speaker 1: i mean sapped. In ancient China, the bugs were generally
Speaker 1: called stinky bug, which is also similar to what people
Speaker 1: in France called them when the bud bugs arrived there
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century, and in Japan floor bug or
Speaker 1: floor lause. In Spain, Chinche. In Germany, the newly arrived
Speaker 1: bedbugs as of the eleventh century would be called various
Speaker 1: names that translated to the following nightcrawler, paper flounder, and
Speaker 1: little venereal. But the English word was short and sweet
Speaker 1: and so perfect that it literally has stood more than
Speaker 1: the test of time.
Speaker 2: Bug.
Speaker 1: Not bed bug, just bug, just bug. So like, that's
Speaker 1: where the word bug came from, was beddogs. That's what
Speaker 1: it was referring to.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: That's what I took from this research.
Speaker 2: Fascinating?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. As the bedbug found its way into city
Speaker 1: after city, home after home, it acquired more names along
Speaker 1: the way, like Redcoat and Mahogany Flat in what would
Speaker 1: become the US, And it also lent its name to
Speaker 1: towns like Bedbug Hill, New Jersey, which I think only
Speaker 1: exists as Bedbug Hill Road these days, and the California
Speaker 1: mining town that was named it kind of like switched
Speaker 1: between names either bedbug or freeze out. Oh okay, I
Speaker 1: guess bedbug in the warmer months, and then freeze out.
Speaker 1: As the bedbug found its way into our homes, our suitcases,
Speaker 1: and our beds, it also began to occupy a bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger portion of our hearts and minds at least,
Speaker 1: how I am going to think of it. Basically, what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that people began to write
Speaker 1: about the bedbug and include it in novels, poems, paintings, songs.
Speaker 1: You can find references to bedbugs in works by Upton,
Speaker 1: Sinclair Sinclair, Lewis Langston, Hughes, John Steinbeck, so many others.
Speaker 1: And bedbugs featured prominently in many early blues songs like
Speaker 1: Black Snake Moan by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Mean Old
Speaker 1: Bedbug Blues, as well as country songs and calypso songs.
Speaker 1: And bedbug didn't always mean bedbug, of course, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of a innuendo term, like
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Eyebrow, venereo, little venereal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be like the bedbug wants to sneak
Speaker 1: under the covers and bite this lady's button or something
Speaker 1: like that. So, yeah, you should look up some of
Speaker 1: these lyrics. But just because of the bedbug star to
Speaker 1: be included in music and art and literature, it didn't
Speaker 1: mean that people were like, oh, you know what, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess bed bugs are here to stay. Let's just
Speaker 1: welcome them with open arms and lift the covers to
Speaker 1: hop on in the battle to get rid of these
Speaker 1: bugs and stop them from spreading was constant, like, absolutely
Speaker 1: constant and frustratingly largely unsuccessful, or at least we can
Speaker 1: assume so, given the frequent turnover and wide variety of
Speaker 1: treatment options. You could use the smoke of ox dung, horsehair, arsenic.
Speaker 1: These are all smokes, lupins and cyprus. You could combine saltpeter,
Speaker 1: soft water, shaving soap, and aqua ammonia. You could put
Speaker 1: on a night light and drizzle turpentine over your sheets
Speaker 1: and pillows.
Speaker 2: Don't please don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right, I feel like especially that last one,
Speaker 1: turpentine in your sheets kind of shows that if you're
Speaker 1: willing to inhale arsenic smoke all night or sleep in
Speaker 1: turpentine soaked sheets, the bedbugs must have been horrible, right,
Speaker 1: A real, real issue, real issue. And there is one account,
Speaker 1: who knows if it's an exaggeration, probably, but it described
Speaker 1: how in the nineteenth century US bedbugs could be scooped
Speaker 1: from the walls of sod houses and measured with a spoon.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly gross. Uh, And our first hand accounts were
Speaker 1: just a couple from so many describing the horrors of
Speaker 1: having to spend a night in an incredibly infested room
Speaker 1: or bed. And I couldn't resist including a few more
Speaker 1: in here, because there are so many just like Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm so itchy.
Speaker 1: From the Reverend James Woodford describing his seventeen eighty six
Speaker 1: day in London. Quote, I was bit so terribly with
Speaker 1: bugs again this night that I got up at four
Speaker 1: o'clock this morning and took a long walk by myself
Speaker 1: about the city until breakfast time the next night. Quote.
Speaker 1: I did not pull off my clothes last night, but
Speaker 1: sat up in a great chair all night with my
Speaker 1: feet on the bed, and slept very well, considering and
Speaker 1: not pestered with bugs, okay. Quote yeah, or a description
Speaker 1: given to Henry Mayhew of a lodging house in London.
Speaker 1: Quote In the morning, he drew, for purposes of ablution
Speaker 1: a basin full of water from a pailful kept in
Speaker 1: the room. In the water were floating dead or apparently
Speaker 1: alive bugs and lice, which my informant was convinced had
Speaker 1: fallen from the ceiling shaken off by the tread of
Speaker 1: someone walking in the rickety heartments above.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeay yeah.
Speaker 1: Apparently the bed bugs were so bad in some of
Speaker 1: these lodging houses that people were told you should get
Speaker 1: half drunk to get a decent night's sleep because the
Speaker 1: bedbugs will keep you up.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: They could be seen quote crawling from house to house,
Speaker 1: escaping through exterior windows and doors, and traveling along walls, pipes,
Speaker 1: and gutters. End quote. I mean that has to be
Speaker 1: an exaggeration, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, I will say when you asked,
Speaker 2: can you feel the bugs?
Speaker 3: I feel I feel like you would feel those Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean that you would feel yeah. Yeah, these are
Speaker 3: not these are these are massive, not subtle, massive numbers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this is my favorite quote. I've read so many,
Speaker 3: but this is my favorite quote.
Speaker 1: Here. Nearly every house is a haunted house. After there
Speaker 1: is no place more eerie, no torture more prolonged and
Speaker 1: blood curdling than that enacted here year after year, no
Speaker 1: atrocity more revolting than the nightly human sacrifice. For there
Speaker 1: are vampires. I have seen them, I have smelt them.
Speaker 2: A yah, yeah, yeay yeah.
Speaker 1: The bedbug situation was truly a nightmare As John Southall
Speaker 1: pointed out in his seventeen thirty a treatise on bugs,
Speaker 1: he called them a nauseous, venomous insect. Clearly, this was
Speaker 1: not going to be a live and let live situation now,
Speaker 1: and that's mostly what I'm going to focus on for
Speaker 1: the rest of the history section. By the sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, there was no more land left undiscovered by bedbugs.
Speaker 1: They were everywhere. It had become a matter of war
Speaker 1: between humans and bed bugs, and the first weapon to
Speaker 1: be employed in this war was hand to hand combat,
Speaker 1: which was, as you can imagine, highly unpleasant. From a
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy three description, quote, this insect, if it be
Speaker 1: crushed or bruised, emits a most horrid and loathsome stench,
Speaker 1: so that those that are bitten by them are often
Speaker 1: in doubt whether it be better to endure the trouble
Speaker 1: of their bitings or kill them and suffer their most
Speaker 1: odious and abominable stink. Yeah end quote. And while manually
Speaker 1: smushing bugs always remained a viable and sometimes necessary option,
Speaker 1: there are only so many bugs that you can smoosh
Speaker 1: in a night, and other strategies evolved to deal with
Speaker 1: the growing infestations, namely prevention and then chemical and non
Speaker 1: chemical control techniques, but most importantly vigilance. There is so
Speaker 1: much more literature on the history of bedbug management than
Speaker 1: I ever expected, and it is absolutely rivetting and hilarious,
Speaker 1: and so you should definitely check out some of these
Speaker 1: papers that I'll mention at the end, because I'm only
Speaker 1: going to cover so much here, so let's get to it.
Speaker 1: England's first bedbug exterminators began popping up in the late
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, the most famous of which was Tiffin and
Speaker 1: Son of London, who exclusively served the nobility, and who
Speaker 1: advertise themselves as quote, may the destroyers of peace be
Speaker 1: destroyed by us Tiffin and Son bug destroyers to her
Speaker 1: majesty end quote. They were so like snobby and classiest.
Speaker 1: It's they said, listen literally a quote I work for
Speaker 1: the upper classes only wow. And then and then this quote.
Speaker 1: My work is more method and I may call it
Speaker 1: scientific treating of bugs rather than wholesale murder just like
Speaker 1: uh okay. And the main strategy that Tiffin and Son
Speaker 1: used for bedbug control was prevention by constantly monitoring and
Speaker 1: checking for bugs, and, among other things, They recommended inspecting
Speaker 1: everything as much as possible, especially secondhand furniture or linen's
Speaker 1: moving into an old house, stuff like that. And one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things that I learned about bedbugs is
Speaker 1: how they drove bed design. What they changed the way
Speaker 1: beds were designed, or at least had to played a
Speaker 1: major role. Okay, so when you picture like a bed
Speaker 1: from I don't know, the rent, like a fancy bed
Speaker 1: and nobility from the Renaissance, what do you picture I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, like the posts and like drapes and things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you can turn it into like a little cave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are tons of like curtains around it and everything
Speaker 1: really ornately carved designs.
Speaker 2: Maybe lots of lots of crevices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no more crevices was the advice so John Southall,
Speaker 1: who called bedbugs that nauseous, venomous insect. He recommended that
Speaker 1: people should make beds as wood free as possible, easy
Speaker 1: to disassemble, and have fewer nooks and crannies for the
Speaker 1: bugs to hide in. So, like, get rid of those
Speaker 1: velvet curtains, get rid of those tassels, get rid of
Speaker 1: the ornately carved wood. That's all prime bedbug real estate.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, yeah, And I just I thought that
Speaker 1: was so interesting. Sort of this need to constantly disassemble
Speaker 1: and reassemble beds was because of bedbugs. Right to treat
Speaker 1: and watch for bedbugs. Sometimes it would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you should make it with this type of wood, not
Speaker 1: that type of wood because this type of wood's repellent. Whatever.
Speaker 1: But bed design in hospitals especially made a big impact
Speaker 1: because hospitals were often hugely infested. There's a quote to
Speaker 1: support this quote. Bugs are frequently a greater evil to
Speaker 1: the patient than the malady for which he seeks a
Speaker 1: hospital end quote.
Speaker 2: Oh man, the number of times I feel like we've
Speaker 2: talked about things that kill you in hospitals that are
Speaker 2: not the thing that you went there for on this podcast.
Speaker 1: And so many hospitals started to use iron beds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: beds entirely made out of iron to combat the bugs.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting because that's what I picture, like old
Speaker 2: timey hospital beds, right or like the metal just like
Speaker 2: those metal frame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so to have this metal frame
Speaker 1: bed was really a big benefit when you were pouring
Speaker 1: boiling water or arsenic or applying sulfur in the crevices
Speaker 1: when you needed to pull the beds away from the
Speaker 1: walls stand them in pails of oil. You wanted to
Speaker 1: douse the slats or springs or crevices in bacon grease.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, these things were not always like great
Speaker 1: choices or effective choices. Could just imagine the smell of
Speaker 1: like rotting bacon grease on your bed.
Speaker 2: Please stop.
Speaker 1: Having iron beds really helped with that constant treatment that
Speaker 1: they needed. If you weren't using bacon grease, you could
Speaker 1: also use these highly guarded patent formulas like PDQ pesky
Speaker 1: Devil's quietus, or pyrethrum powder, which is an insecticide derived
Speaker 1: from plants chrysanthemums. The point is there were many different
Speaker 1: options at your disposal. But if you used every single
Speaker 1: one of these options, despite if you hired the most
Speaker 1: reputable exterminator, despite keeping a constant watch for the bugs,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be sure that you would defeat them, and
Speaker 1: the problem would only get worse during the Industrial Revolution
Speaker 1: as people flocked to the city in droves throughout the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and into the early nineteen hundreds, bedbugs
Speaker 1: were for sure winning the war. There was really no contest.
Speaker 1: Infestations went from seasonal to year round as population density
Speaker 1: went up, apartment density went up, and central heating began
Speaker 1: to be incorporated into buildings, which allowed bedbugs to just
Speaker 1: keep living their best life year round.
Speaker 2: Year year round. Baby.
Speaker 1: I read one paper that estimated about a third of
Speaker 1: dwellings in major European cities in the nineteen thirties and
Speaker 1: nineteen forties were infested, and half of London had bedbugs.
Speaker 1: The Western hemisphere was no different. In eighteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: a lawsuit in Chicago concluded with the jury ruling that
Speaker 1: no one should pay rent in a house that was
Speaker 1: infested with bed bugs, and newspapers were like, no one
Speaker 1: in Chicago is going to be paying rent. Then many
Speaker 1: landlords began to require, and some still do, a prospective
Speaker 1: tenant to disclose any history with bed bugs, and that
Speaker 1: of course discriminated against those earning low incomes who tended
Speaker 1: to be at higher risk of exposure to bed bugs.
Speaker 1: But no one was truly exempt from the threat of
Speaker 1: bed bugs. They were found on buses, taxis, trains, planes
Speaker 1: and automobiles, inside televisions and radios, at repair shops, at
Speaker 1: the theater, library, hospitals, schools, daycare prisons, hotels, office buildings, restaurants,
Speaker 1: fire and police stations, stores, funeral homes everywhere. Still true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: still true. Soldiers during World War One and World War
Speaker 1: Two were engaged in another war alongside the political one,
Speaker 1: as bedbugs prospered and invaded the cork lining of helmets,
Speaker 1: and they bit soldiers' heads. Oh no, they occupied every
Speaker 1: possible bunk in living quarters, causing such a morale issue
Speaker 1: during World War Two that there were congressional hearings to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get rid of these bugs wow,
Speaker 1: which ultimately led to the most effective, economical, and apparently
Speaker 1: safer to humans anyway solution that the world had ever
Speaker 1: seen in the fight against bedbugs. Ddt aka di chlorodphenol trichloroethane.
Speaker 1: I think I got that right.
Speaker 2: I think you nail nim.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen forties, the world had come a long
Speaker 1: way from the bacon grease ointment days of the seventeen
Speaker 1: or eighteen hundreds. But while some of these insecticides may
Speaker 1: have worked against the bugs, they were also often deadly
Speaker 1: to humans because they included things like cyanide, gas, mercury, chloride, phenol, kerosene,
Speaker 1: and so on. DDT, on the other hand, was also toxic,
Speaker 1: but less so. It also didn't have to come into
Speaker 1: contact directly with the bugs to work, Like you could
Speaker 1: kind of just set it and forget it, and it
Speaker 1: would last for much, much longer than many of the
Speaker 1: other compounds, which would lose efficacy after like a few hours.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell the epic story of the
Speaker 1: rise and fall of DDT because I think we're planning
Speaker 1: oncovering it later this season.
Speaker 2: I thought, also, you I've touched a lot on it
Speaker 2: in like our Dingay episode and maybe a couple of others.
Speaker 2: I have no memory of that You've definitely at least
Speaker 2: mentioned like all of that story. Okay, Yeah, Well, I'm
Speaker 2: going to just real quick go through a couple of things,
Speaker 2: especially as it pertains to bedbugs. So DDT was first
Speaker 2: synthesized in eighteen seventy four, but mostly forgotten about for
Speaker 2: like sixty five years or so, and then in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine when it was rediscovered by a Swiss chemist
Speaker 2: named Paul Muller, who would later go on to get
Speaker 2: a Nobel Prize for this. DDT was found to be
Speaker 2: incredibly effective, Like I said, and so it was shortly
Speaker 2: deployed all around the world to kill everything, including bedbugs,
Speaker 2: and you could.
Speaker 1: Find it and buy it anywhere. It seemed like the miracle.
Speaker 1: In the short term in terms of bedbug control was
Speaker 1: within five to seven years of when DDT was available.
Speaker 1: Researchers had a really hard time finding any bedbug populations
Speaker 1: that they could research what, and by the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: infestations and most industrialized countries were rare. Bedbug awareness campaigns
Speaker 1: fell by the wayside. And I would bet that if
Speaker 1: you plotted like the number of research articles about bedbugs
Speaker 1: from the early nineteen hundreds to today, you'd see a
Speaker 1: big boom up to the nineteen forties, and then a
Speaker 1: crash in the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, and then and
Speaker 1: then yeah, and then it comes back up. First resistance
Speaker 1: to DDT, which happened pretty soon after its introduction, of course,
Speaker 1: and then the prohibition of DDT for very good reasons,
Speaker 1: meant that bedbugs slowly rebounded, and that slow trickle of
Speaker 1: papers in the nineteen seventies maybe reporting on like oh
Speaker 1: resistance here, oh a case here, that would turn into
Speaker 1: this full on wave in the early two thousands, as
Speaker 1: bedbugs found their way back into our beds, our couches,
Speaker 1: our futons, our bean bags, our homes. The first time
Speaker 1: that bedbugs might be back came in nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: in the form of an article describing an apparent increase
Speaker 1: in bedbug bites in Cambridge, England, and notably this article
Speaker 1: mentioned how no insecticide seemed effective. A couple of years later,
Speaker 1: a report from the US also mentioned that bedbug bites
Speaker 1: might be on the rise, and in two thousand and
Speaker 1: one Venezuela reported the first instance of bedbugs in thirty years.
Speaker 1: Anecdotes then turned into data which put a number to
Speaker 1: the bedbug resurgence in the UK between nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: and two thousand, a sixfold increase in bedbug infestations. In
Speaker 1: Australia between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: a four thousand, five hundred percent rise in bedbug numbers.
Speaker 2: Australia's numbers are bananas, and they were like the easiest
Speaker 2: to find. So it's fascinating to me, like Australia doing
Speaker 2: a great job counting, but like woof interesting. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of the papers that I read were from Australia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: huh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: These these numbers are like hard to because they're also different,
Speaker 1: but like they're percent, they're whatever. And so for instance,
Speaker 1: like that those numbers in Australia were over a seven
Speaker 1: year period, whereas in the US in one year two
Speaker 1: thousand and two to two thousand and three, it was
Speaker 1: a five hundred percent increase in calls about bedbugs, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you measure that big prevalence? Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: regardless of like how to relate these numbers to each other,
Speaker 1: what they really means, it's pretty obvious that this is
Speaker 1: a global trend. What drove this ride in bedbugs? I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like there are a lot of different factors
Speaker 1: at work here, but most people point towards the rise
Speaker 1: and insecticide resistance, increased global travel, as well as a
Speaker 1: lack of public awareness, at least in the early days
Speaker 1: of their re emergence, Like people thought that bedbugs were
Speaker 1: a problem of the past, right. Bedbugs certainly occupied the
Speaker 1: headlines for a long time with horror stories and warnings
Speaker 1: of you know, if you step one foot into this
Speaker 1: infested place, you're doomed forever and you'll have to throw
Speaker 1: away your entire apartment and everything, and that all led
Speaker 1: to an incredible amount of shame and stigma and misinformation
Speaker 1: and disinformation surrounding something that it's really hard to have
Speaker 1: control over in your own life. And I feel like
Speaker 1: that's something that you know, throughout this episode we're talking
Speaker 1: about like, Oh, it's so horrible to think about these
Speaker 1: bugs crawling on you in your bed or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it is, but I feel like that sort of reaction
Speaker 1: is part of this whole aspect of shame and stigma
Speaker 1: and like blaming. Yeah, So, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: really have a good wrap up point here, but I
Speaker 1: guess that, Like, as I was writing this, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I remember when bed bugs were dominating headlines, but I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I've read that much about them lately.
Speaker 1: And so, is there still a rampant bedbug problem? Have
Speaker 1: we just gotten accustomed to it? What's going on with
Speaker 1: bed bugs today? Arin?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh, okay, let me try and answer that question
Speaker 2: right after this break. To answer your question.
Speaker 3: Briefly, Yeah, yeah, okay, I figured.
Speaker 2: There's still a thing. They're still increasing, they're still spreading,
Speaker 2: They show no signs of stopping in homes in hotels, trains,
Speaker 2: cruise ships, buses, public transportation, office buildings, healthcare facilities, poultry farms.
Speaker 2: I don't know why those always come up across the
Speaker 2: globe every single continent except Antarctica. They're endemic, they're here
Speaker 2: with us. The decline that we saw from the use
Speaker 2: of DDT and other insecticides in the you know, mid
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds wasn't equal across the globe, unsurprisingly, but the
Speaker 2: resurgence has been global without a doubt, and the spread
Speaker 2: of insecticide resistance like you mentioned AARON has been thought
Speaker 2: to be one of the real driving forces behind this resurgence,
Speaker 2: and insecticide and pesticide resistant bugs bedbugs are found across
Speaker 2: the globe. But this is also in combination with increased
Speaker 2: global travel that facilitates the spread of these bugs in
Speaker 2: our luggage and on our clothes and in our towels,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so this has allowed for the spread
Speaker 2: of the two major species that I mentioned, the common
Speaker 2: bedbug and the tropical bedbug across the globe. So we
Speaker 2: really don't see like a true dichotomy in these populations
Speaker 2: like we may be used to in the past. With
Speaker 2: the tropical one mostly being in the tropics, and the
Speaker 2: common one mostly being in temperate areas. They're both really
Speaker 2: widespread today. The other thing that compounds this that I
Speaker 2: find really interesting is that for the most part across
Speaker 2: the globe, in the US and Europe everywhere, there aren't
Speaker 2: centralized monitoring systems for bedbugs, and so the data that
Speaker 2: we have comes primarily from pest control companies themselves, which
Speaker 2: is very interesting. And this lack of centralized reporting and
Speaker 2: relying on private companies means that we're going to have
Speaker 2: huge differences in how this data is collected as well
Speaker 2: as how infestations are actually dealt with. And so there
Speaker 2: is a lot of data that suggests that the way
Speaker 2: that bedbug infestations are dealt with can vary widely, which
Speaker 2: can contribute to continued spread or worsened spread because they're
Speaker 2: not actually being dealt with properly. And some of the
Speaker 2: data I will say that a lot of companies are
Speaker 2: collecting a lot of this data, which is shocking. Like
Speaker 2: in the US, in twenty fifteen, studies I think by
Speaker 2: Orcan suggested that eighty percent of hotels in the US
Speaker 2: dealt with at least one infed station in that year
Speaker 2: eighty percent of hotels in the US. Wow. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: like you mentioned some of the numbers out of Australia,
Speaker 2: like thousands of percent increase in reporting in numbers, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. They're everywhere. They're everywhere, and they're not going
Speaker 2: to go anywhere. That's I think the biggest the reality
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One thing that I want to talk about, because it's
Speaker 2: this podcast and because it's just fascinating, is that every
Speaker 2: other time that we have talked about in insect on
Speaker 2: this podcast, we have talked about the pathogens that that
Speaker 2: insect is spreading to humans. We have talked about those
Speaker 2: insects as vectors fleas, lice, mosquitoes, ticks, all of them
Speaker 2: as vectors of disease, infectious disease. Listeners who may have
Speaker 2: noticed in the biology section, I didn't mention that at all.
Speaker 2: What's going on? What's up with that? So I want
Speaker 2: to talk about it a little bit because I think
Speaker 2: it's one of the most interesting areas of future research
Speaker 2: for bedbugs. The idea of bedbugs as a vector of
Speaker 2: infectious diseases, like every other bloodsucker that we've ever talked
Speaker 2: about on this podcast is not anything new, But the
Speaker 2: central dogma across all of the literature is that bedbugs
Speaker 2: are not vectors. Bedbugs do not transmit disease. It's repeated
Speaker 2: over and over. That is what the CDC says. That
Speaker 2: is the official statement. But here's the thing. It's not
Speaker 2: because they can't. And we know this now today because
Speaker 2: plenty of studies that go back way longer than I realize,
Speaker 2: actually demonstrate that the end i'll quote here natural transmission
Speaker 2: cycle of multiple human pathogenic microbes can be completed in
Speaker 2: bedbugs end quote when they are artificially infected under laboratory conditions.
Speaker 2: So a lot of different studies have infected bedbugs with
Speaker 2: various microbes and been able to have those microbes grow
Speaker 2: in the bedbug and then actually be passed by the
Speaker 2: bedbugs be shed by the bedbugs. The list of these
Speaker 2: pathogens includes, but is not limited to, shawgus disease, Trepannosoma
Speaker 2: cruise i, Bartonella quintana aka trench fever, laosbourne relapsing fever,
Speaker 2: Burellia ricrensis, various other ricketsias, possibly your Sinia pestis aka plague. Okay,
Speaker 2: and there are probably more so previously it was really
Speaker 2: thought that physiologically, biologically, bedbugs just can't transmit disease. But
Speaker 2: that's not true because we know that biologically bedbugs can
Speaker 2: become infected various pathogens, can undergo whatever things they need
Speaker 2: to in this bedbug in the vector hosts that they
Speaker 2: would normally do in say a kissing bug, they can
Speaker 2: do that in the bedbug, and then the bedbugs can
Speaker 2: shed these pathogens. And yet we still don't have any
Speaker 2: convincing evidence that bedbugs are in fact transmitting any of
Speaker 2: these diseases in real life.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that makes sense because, first
Speaker 1: of all, if you think about a mosquito or a
Speaker 1: kissing bug or a tick or whatever, compared to bedbugs,
Speaker 1: there's not as much host hopping because a bedbug is
Speaker 1: living in your bed, so it's going to feed on
Speaker 1: the same person night after night after night after.
Speaker 2: Night, potentially. But in a hotel, you've got a different
Speaker 2: person in that bed every single night.
Speaker 1: It's true, but it's still very different. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's still very different. I feel like it's ecologically limiting
Speaker 1: in that way.
Speaker 2: So that's the big question is if it's not because
Speaker 2: of a biological barrier then is it an ecological barrier? Well?
Speaker 1: And then the other thing too, is thinking about because
Speaker 1: all of the pathogens that you described have different transmission roots.
Speaker 1: So like the fact that a bedbug will shed these
Speaker 1: different pathogens is that enough foreign fiction? Right?
Speaker 2: Well, but we can we can for example, in the
Speaker 2: case of Taku, I go on to infect other animals
Speaker 2: from bedbugs under laboratory conditions.
Speaker 1: But how often is one bedbug encountering all these different animals?
Speaker 2: It's one hundred percent. These are all of the questions
Speaker 2: that I think are so interesting and fascinating because yes,
Speaker 2: what this tells us is that it's potentially ecological environmental
Speaker 2: factors that are precluding bedbugs from serving as vectors in
Speaker 2: their natural environments. But what are those specific barriers and
Speaker 2: under what conditions could they potentially be overcome if the
Speaker 2: conditions of human bedbugs interactions change in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's interesting to think about in terms
Speaker 1: of historical infestations of bedbugs when they were like much
Speaker 1: much higher, and maybe they did have more opportunities to
Speaker 1: play a role in human to human transmission of something
Speaker 1: that it's hard to see now days necessarily, But I mean,
Speaker 1: like you said like it's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's fun and interesting, especially just because
Speaker 2: I think that the dogma for a long time was
Speaker 2: that because we've never seen sustained transmission of any human
Speaker 2: pathogens from these bed bugs, it must be that they're
Speaker 2: incapable of being vectors. But now we know that that's
Speaker 2: not true biologically, right, what is the barrier? Is it
Speaker 2: a physiological barrier? Probably not, But is it an ecological barrier?
Speaker 2: Seems like likely, yeah, which I think is just so
Speaker 2: so interesting to think about it as an ecological and
Speaker 2: environmental barrier rather than a biological one, especially because so
Speaker 2: many vectors that we talk about on this podcast are
Speaker 2: so specific. Right, it's like one pathogen, one vector, but
Speaker 2: bedbugs are over here, Like.
Speaker 1: Well, we could do it, but we're just not gonna,
Speaker 1: I mean, thank goodness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one less thing to stress about, yeah, of bed bugs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, that's what I have, Aaron. Bed bugs. They're everywhere,
Speaker 2: they're richy, but at least they're not giving us diseases
Speaker 2: as far as we know. Well, sources, sources.
Speaker 1: I have a bunch I'm going to call out too,
Speaker 1: in particular, one is by roth at all, The one
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier bedbugs evolved before their bad hosts
Speaker 1: and did not cospaciate with ancient humans. And then also
Speaker 1: the one I mentioned at the very top by Boynton
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty five called the Bedbug and the Age
Speaker 1: of Elegance.
Speaker 2: I had a number of different papers, a couple of
Speaker 2: my favorite on just the general biology. One is titled
Speaker 2: the Biology of the bed Bugs in Annual Reviews Entomology
Speaker 2: from two thousand and seven. There was a great one
Speaker 2: from twenty twelve that was Bedbugs Clinical Relevance and Control
Speaker 2: Option in Clinical Microbiology Reviews. And then I've got a
Speaker 2: number of more papers on the bedbugs as vectors in
Speaker 2: the biology labs, so you guys can read more about
Speaker 2: that on our website. You can find the sources all
Speaker 2: of these from this episode and all of our episodes
Speaker 2: podcastikilly dot com. That's where they'll be.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this
Speaker 1: episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Leana Scolacci are amazing sound mixer.
Speaker 1: Thank you to the Exactly Right Network.
Speaker 2: And thank you to you listeners for listening. This is
Speaker 2: a fun kind of different one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope that you don't regret sticking with it
Speaker 1: this episode that made you itchy. And a special thank
Speaker 1: you to our wonderful, generous, so appreciated patrons.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, until
Speaker 2: next time, wash your hands, you failty animals.
Speaker 4: Oh buba buba bubo oh