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Other species of bedbugs will suck human blood, but normally only if their favoured host, like poultry, is unavailable.
Bedbugs are small, but not too small to see.
Adults are about four or five millimetres long and one-and-a-half to three millimetres in width.
They are brownish in colour, but may appear banded because they are covered in short hairs.
Having said that, they are still not easy to have a close look at, because they are very fast and only come out at night.
In fact, their favourite dinner time is more like an early breakfast, because they usually dine on us an hour before dawn.
If you want to see or catch some bedbugs, this is the best time too do it, because you may see them trying to get home with full bellies to sleep it off for a few days before going out again.
So, rather than waste your time, it is probably better to study a number of pictures of bedbugs first so that you know what you are looking for..
Bedbugs are attracted by heat and CO2, so one way of trying to catch a few is putting a bar of soap in a centimetre of water and then lying on the bed.
After half an hour, get the soap and whip the bed clothes back.
You can dab up any slow coaches with the soap.
Then you will have lots of time to study them under a magnifying lens.
If they are not living in your mattress and you are sure that you have bed bugs, check behind any loose-fitting woodwork.
They love to get into dark crevices to sleep it off and skirting boards or architrave are perfect.
So is damaged plaster, broken lino or ripped wall paper.
Hardly any crack is too thin for them, because they are so thin themselves, as you can observe from photos.
They look as if they have been flattened.
However, the nymphs or babies are very small, a bit rounder and often whitish.
It takes six moultings for a nymph to become an adult and the moulted skins look just like the insect that left it, but with nothing inside it - as if it had been sort of sucked out.
The bedbug's skin is in fact the key to killing it, as bedbugs have become tolerant to most common pesticides.
Their skin, or exoskeleton, has a waxy layer on it to prevent dehydration.
If you can remove that wax, the insect will dry out and die.
Some modern bedbug sprays include finely powdered glass or silicone which sticks to the insect and as it wriggles into crevices, the powder rubs the wax off.
Diatomaceous earth was used for the same purpose long ago and it is making a comeback in the attempt to exterminate bed bugs.
It is non-toxic and environmentally friendly, so safe to use in your home and around your pets.
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