When bloodthirsty bed bugs made headlines for infesting Paris Fashion Week in 2023, it shone a spotlight on a problem that’s been making experts itch for decades: the arms race going on between bed bugs and humans. Now, with the 2024 Summer Olympics fast approaching, the stakes are higher than ever
by SOFIA QUAGLIA by SOFIA QUAGLIA (@SofiaQuaglia) Sofia is a freelance science journalist who specialises in stories concerning the natural world, wildlife and the environment.
Bed bugs have been around longer than humans. When researchers used bed bug DNA to get an idea of when they first evolved, they found that the ancestors of today’s bed bugs were already tiny but successful predators over 115 million years ago, during the reign of the dinosaurs.
What they were preying on back then, we don’t know, possibly ancient birds. What we do know is that when the first bats appeared, bed bugs were present. A few enterprising individuals crawled into the caves where bats slept to enjoy a hearty meal. From there, several species of bed bugs evolved to feed on their blood, according to the research of Prof Klaus Reinhardt, an evolutionary biologist at University of Tübingen, Germany.
As early humans took shelter in those same caves, bed bugs suddenly found they had a larger, juicier mammal to feed on. Somewhere between 900,000 and 100,000 years ago (Reinhardt reckons 245,000 years ago) bed bugs added humans to their roster of victims – a unique move for a parasite, which usually thrive by being highly specialised to one type of host.
The oldest recorded proof of bed bugs that mingled with humans are the 11,000-year-old bugs archaeologists found in caves in North America. There are also fossilised tracks left by bed bug ancestors in ancient Egyptian workers’ living quarters from 3,550 years ago, as well as Greek comedy texts from 423 BCE with characters saying “What a torture the bugs will this day put me to.”
Today there are about 100 species of bed bugs, all part of the insect family, known as Cimicidae. They’re wingless, six-legged, rust-coloured, and the size and shape of an apple seed. They’re also obligated-blood feeders, meaning they can only feed on the blood of warmblooded animals. But only three of these 100 species have a penchant for human blood: the common bed bug (Cimex lectularius), the tropical bed bug (Cimex hemipterus) and the West African bed bug (Leptocimex boueti). All three of these species still also feed on birds and bats, because they never specialised completely
