Man Who Lets the Bed Bugs Bite

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You’ve heard the nursery rhyme a million times when you were a child, but did you for a second think that anyone may actually willingly let bed bugs bite them? The New York Times wrote an article about Louis Sorkin, a man that biologist Bill Schutt features in his new book “Dark Banquet.” The book features different creatures that share a love for one thing: blood. The book is both instructive and graphic.

The article discusses how Sorkin lets the bed bugs bite. Sorkin’s purpose is to take a closer look at their colonies and understand their habits. To do this he has rigged up a glass jar with a mesh top, in fact the weave is so dense none of the bed bugs can escape and that goes for newborns as well. The only thing that can through the mesh is the bed bug’s stylets or in other words their piercing mouth-parts (where they feed). Sorkin places his arm against the mesh and proceeds to let the bed bugs bite. He claims that it doesn’t hurt and that they need to feed. He lets them feed for about ten minutes before removing his arm!

Here is a video of Sorkins’s Bed Bug colony; the video doesn’t have any sound, but you get an idea of what the bedbugs look like when they are active. We have more movies on our bed bug video page.

For more information on Sorkin and the book “Dark Banquet” featuring bed bugs, bats and other blood-thirsty creatures visit the article from The New York Times:
nytimes.com/2008/10/21/science/21blood.html?_r=1&oref=slogin