News Life

Bloodthirsty bedbugs have feasted on prey for 100 million years

New genetic analyses reveal the insects evolved from at least the Cretaceous

bat

PICKY EATERS Genetic analysis has revealed that ancestral bedbugs, like their modern relatives, probably preyed upon birds and small mammals, like this bat. In this image, a bedbug comes face-to-face with its prey.

Mark Chappell/UC Riverside

By Jennifer Leman

This article is only available to Science News subscribers.

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address to access our archives.

Not a subscriber?

Science News is a nonprofit.

Support us by subscribing now.

More Stories from Science News on Life

  1. sea slug body next to detached head
    Animals

    A sea slug’s detached head can crawl around and grow a whole new body

    By Susan Milius
  2. image of a giraffe and a rhinoceros in Namibia
    Animals

    Delve into the history of the fight for Earth’s endangered creatures

    By Sarah Zielinski
  3. green tree frogs mating
    Animals

    Female green tree frogs have noise-canceling lungs that help them hear mates

    By Jonathan Lambert
  4. cat rubbing on a catnip plant
    Neuroscience

    Catnip repels insects. Scientists may have finally found out how

    By Erin Garcia de Jesus
  5. illustration of a woman walking across of a bridge of DNA
    Genetics

    DNA databases are too white, so genetics doesn’t help everyone. How do we fix that?

    By Tina Hesman Saey
  6. robot swimming in South China Sea
    Materials Science

    This soft robot withstands crushing pressures at the ocean’s greatest depths

    By Carolyn Gramling
  7. illustration of a science fiction nanobot brain mesh interface
    Neuroscience

    Three visions of the future, inspired by neuroscience’s past and present

    By Laura Sanders
  8. Muusoctopus johnsonianus octopus on the seafloor
    Paleontology

    Predatory octopuses were drilling into clamshells at least 75 million years ago

    By Carolyn Gramling

From the Nature Index

Paid Content