Very bad news on the travel front. Seems bedbugs are here to stay. The Wall Street Journal reports on a comprehensive genetic study of bedbugs that shows how they’ve evolved defenses against today’s pesticides. The more poison we throw at them, the more weapons they develop to fight it. Thicker shells, detoxifying enzymes, and adapted nerve cells, all of which are passed along to succeeding generations.
And if this news isn’t disturbing enough, WSJ kindly provides visuals enough to give a frequent hotel guest like me nightmares between the 600-thread-count sheets.
Though I’ve written how a cautious entomologist deals with hotel stays, I must admit that I simply throw caution to the wind and bury my head in the sand. I don’t want to look. I can’t look. I slip into hotel beds some 200-250 nights a year—I can’t afford to be obsessed. Yet… ick. I get the creeps just thinking of them.
By the way, if cooties give you the shivers, don’t watch the WSJ slideshow, either.
3/11/17: Edited to add a great resource, more than you ever wanted to know about bedbugs, on the site of nonprofit org Tuck, which is devoted to sleep.
