GIZMODO - Despite their tiny size, bed bugs are perhaps the scariest thing a person can realistically encounter in their home. But what do these blood-sucking fiends fear most? The answer, recent research shows, is apparently water.
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, tracked how bed bugs behaved around water. The insects avoided wet surfaces as much as possible, though younger bugs were more nimble at doing so, they found. The team’s research not only sheds light on one of humanity’s most spine-chilling parasites but could also help improve pest control efforts.
“These findings demonstrate that the wet surface is intrinsically aversive to bed bugs, a factor that must be considered in the development and application of liquid-based control tactics to prevent bed bugs from evading freshly treated surfaces,” the study researchers wrote in their paper, published this past December in the Journal of Ethology.