The prudish steps bedbugs

While in Paris this summer, I stayed in a somewhat shabby hotel. It was only when I returned to Quebec that my partner told me that there were bedbug warnings in customer comments and ratings on the internet. My brain convinced that I had brought these illegal travelers back to my bungalow, I then started to scratch myself. Having been around bedbugs regularly in my youth and explored a little about their biology, the simple prospect of having one in my house destabilizes me psychologically.

Let’s remember, as Halloween approaches, that bedbugs and mosquitoes are vampires who suck your blood to go play blood sausage with their children. But, of the two blood-sucking species, I much prefer the mosquito because at least we can see it and hear it coming. However, living with bedbugs is a bit like sleeping on a bed bristling with mandibles that are very difficult to eradicate.

Bedbugs quickly develop resistance to the molecules used to fight them. To this rapid adaptability to poisons, we must add their great resistance to starvation to understand how tough they are that you do not want to face. Even after their extermination, there will still be the colossal work necessary to get rid of the psychological impacts that lead to scratching for no reason.

Unfortunately, thanks to climate change, they are taking advantage of increasingly long and hot summers to thrive. So much so that, once associated with places where precariousness is rife, bedbugs are now reported even in the chic Victoria’s Secret stores in New York. Luxury bedbugs, indeed!

I therefore have great compassion for the establishments in Paris which are making headlines because of bedbugs. In France, their presence is reported in public transport, cinemas, hospitals and universities. Absolute truth or media hype? Opinions are divided. One thing is certain, the issue has become very political as the Olympic Games approach. We absolutely want to find a solution before the international press comes to tear down the crest and pluck the pride of the Gallic Rooster.

Like all the critters that accompanied the wanderings of Sapiensfrom its original Asian territory, the bug has experienced a spectacular dispersal in the biosphere.

What do you want ? In the early days of their infancy, rats, mice, cockroaches, bedbugs and other critters applauded the explorers, the colonial enterprises and the project of globalization of cultures and economies. They saw in these initiatives so many opportunities to impose themselves on humans and complete their own planetary odyssey. Wherever it lands, “he who rubs against it, bites it” remains the motto of the undesirable bedbug. Even an environmentalist who advocates for the importance of all life still finds them a little repugnant.

Allow me to tell you about their sexual displays to convince you, a little more, to stay away from bedbugs. From a human point of view, bedbug reproduction is one of the most traumatic in the animal world. The reason is that males, who have a reproductive system comparable to a drill, do not opt ​​for a “normal” way of copulating. They puncture the female’s abdomen and inject the semen into her belly. This method of reproduction is called traumatic extragenital insemination. In some cases, the frequency of piercings can transform a female bedbug into a veritable sieve at the mercy of microbial invasions.

As sperm released into the abdomen must make their way to the ovaries, the vast majority will be decimated by the female’s immune cells before seeing an egg. To make up for this huge loss of soldiers, males evolved to produce lots of semen. For comparison, specialists say, if we were bedbugs, we would have to produce 30 liters of sperm to hope to have a baby.

At this volume, these are not small pots, but cauldrons that would be given to clients in sperm banks. Let us therefore thank evolution for having guided us towards the very chaste position of the missionary.

I know this is all a bit gross, but are you able to take one last piece of information? As Mr. bug, who is in heat, no longer distinguishes males from females very well, mating can transform the infested mattress into a collective sting.

In many cases, experts say, males spear other males and inject them with semen. The sperm from the biting male will then mix with those of the recipient. Which means that by screening a female, the male carrying this mixed team sends her a combination of two seeds. Very clever then whoever tries to certify the paternity of the descendants.

I stop here, because in telling you this “tragic” destiny of females, I simply wanted to remind you that in a house infested with bedbugs, it is not only the owners who suffer. Believe me, even if you practice extreme sadomasochism on a bed crawling with bedbugs, the bugs must find you pretty good straight.