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Video: Bedbugs in ACTION Dining on Entomologist
By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 18, 2010
Modified Oct 18, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 18, 2010
Modified Oct 18, 2010
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Just in time for lunch, here's fresh video of an entomologist feeding his lab's bedbugs with his own blood. Call it gross, but wouldn't you do the same thing for your pets if they were starving? Watch as Louis Sorkin lets his beloved BB's crawl all over his arm and feast to their hearts' content. Besides providing a vivid glimpse into the life of a professional bedbug wrangler, the video also gives you the opportunity to see the parasites up-close and personal, so you have a frame of reference if you think you've got a problem. And you will have a problem.
Sorkin has worked at the American Museum of Natural History for over 30 years, and maintains a small colony of a few thousand bedbugs in four jars in his lab. (For research, not for revenge plots.) He reminds everyone that the media doesn't really show what bedbugs look like—teeny ones are pale and just a millimeter big, not the big blood-filled suckers!
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bedbugs
museum of natural history
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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