Blood-sucking bugs that live in your bedroom
Bed bugs and fleas may be living in your room waiting for the lights to go down and for you to fall asleep to celebrate their blood party. If you have animals in your home, such as cats or dogs, there is a good chance that you also have blood-sucking insects in your home. These insects are hard to find because they are so small, but they usually leave telltale marks on their bodies in the form of bites. Bed bugs and fleas are the main source of food for human blood.
The smallest of these insects is the flea. It is between 2 and 3 millimeters long and can jump more than a hundred times the length of its body. If a human had this superpower, we would be able to jump a city block. This incredible jumping ability allows the flea to find an animal to get to its home and then jump onto its human host. Fleas like to live and hide among feathers and hairs, they have a small, flat, brown-like body with a small head. This body design serves the optimal purpose of blending in with your hair as a place to hide and eat. These tiny blood-sucking insects do not have wings. They do not need to fly to find a host due to their jumping powers.
Flea reproduction begins with an egg that an adult lays on your carpet. These eggs take between two and twelve days to develop into worms or larvae. These bloodsucking babies can survive on your carpet on the food they seek for a long time before going through both phases of a molting process. After the worm larvae molt twice, they will develop into a cocoon. Fleas can remain in this cocoon in your carpet for up to a year. The cocoon acts as a protection or barrier against damage. It protects the flea from things like climate change and pesticides. That is why it is so difficult to get rid of these little insects in your home. After the cocoon hatches, the adult flea emerges and is ready for its blood feast.
When most people think of bloodsucking insects in their bedroom, they think of the bed bug. This parasitic animal is making a strong comeback in the United States due to the DDT ban. While dust mites live on human skin, bed bugs feast on human blood in the middle of the night when you’re asleep. These nasty little critters only have one food source, you. These insects are like little vampires. They are very small and flat, about 1/5 of an inch total. Bed bugs are large enough to be seen by the human eye, but they hide during the day and come out at night when you sleep to feed. They are very adept at hiding in cracks and in your mattress.
These critters are made to suck blood. Their flattened body structure makes it easy for them to slip into tight spots and crevices to hide in during the day. Bed bugs have a needle-like mouth that they use to pierce humans. Before these parasites start drinking your blood, they inject saliva into your system. This saliva acts in two ways. First, chemicals in the saliva cause a numbing effect so that its human host cannot feel the sting. Second, this saliva makes the blood flow freely, so the insect can easily feed.
Bed bugs go through five stages in their life. The first is the egg stage, which takes one to four weeks to develop into nymphs. This parasitic nymph will molt five times during its life on the journey to adulthood. During each molt, the bed bug will need to feast on human blood in order to grow and survive. A female bed bug can produce more than two hundred eggs in her lifetime. This is what makes these insects multiply so quickly.