Friday, April 26, 2019

The ultimate binge drinkers

Institutionalization of the bedbugs' fear in identifying other vermin in the society from the aim of social segregation and eradication is shocking!

They drink, and drink, and drink – up to three times their own body weight. No wonder, they are called the ultimate binge drinkers. At times, they are too bloated to return to their homes. Their stealthy lifestyle of drinking, and their habit of helping themselves uninvited stirs the strongest psychological fear among people. Evolved some 100,000 years ago, bedbugs’ drinking habit has sustained them as a species at the cost of humans who continue to shudder at the mere mention of these tiny blood suckers. Its influence on our lives has been unprecedented, pretty much every other bug, including the stomach bug, the computer bug, and the electronic bug carries that name tag. 

In his fifteen years of research on bedbugs, Klaus Reinhardt, a professor of applied zoology at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany, has found that only two from some one hundred odd species of the family Cimicidae are found in our beds. While Cimex hemipterus resides in the tropical regions, the other Cimex lectularius dwells in temperate zones. Although bedbug sightings may have declined in many tropical countries in the recent years, increase in bedbug infestation in the UK, US, Australia and Canada in the past fifteen years clearly indicates that bedbugs have no respect for class and prosperity. In fact, they never had given the fact that London was heaving with bedbugs in the early 19th century. 

Divided into nine profusely illustrated sections, covering aspects of bug diversity, bug sex and bug forecast, Bedbug provides intriguing, engaging and entertaining insights into the life of an insect that is as much part of science as fiction. Alexander Dumas sighted bedbugs during his travels; Shakespeare referred to bedbugs in his plays: and Queen Charlotte was not ashamed of the infested Buckingham Palace. Throughout recorded history, bedbugs have featured in literature, film, poetry and pop culture. The sci-fi musical Bedbugs!!! had a successful run Off-Broadway in 2014. The musical comedy amplified extreme fear leading to paranoia about bedbugs becoming immune to almost all forms of insecticide. In the musical, a mad-scientist Carly mutates New York City’s bedbug population with her super-insecticide to take revenge of her mother’s bedbug-related death. Through the natural history lens, Reinhardt explores how bedbugs became ‘the other’, to represent personal animosity by creating parasitical villains. 

Bedbug provides multiple perspectives on an insect that causes more mental despair than any other human parasite, and yet has interesting aspects that call for tolerance towards it. For a species to be all pervasive, it must have a distinct genetic makeup and a curious sex life. Bedbugs are indeed unique on both aspects. With 14,000 identified genes in the adult bedbug to 36,000 genes for the entire species, researchers are now looking at the genome of the bedbug that can help in the design of pesticides to get rid of these blood suckers. It is still early to suggest if such a possibility has been worked out to any degree of certainty. However, genetic research can indeed help in identifying genes that area associated with blood-sucking, or digestion, or their mating habits, or whatever. 

When it comes to the battle of sexes, male bedbugs are clear winners as it stabs knife-like copulatory organ through the skin into the female’s body. How do females survive such traumatic insemination? That they survive, and contribute to building multiple progenies must make any sane head spin with bewilderment. Have female bedbugs invented a set of extra genitalia to cope with traumatic mating? Reinhardt sets aside such bizarre exaggeration to provide a set of possible strategies that female bedbugs may have been applying to stay in the business. When it comes to issue of sex, humans may have something to reflect upon bedbugs mating encounters. 

What makes Bedbug insight-fully interesting is the manner in which scientific research has been viewed keeping in mind the journey of this insect through history, literature and culture. We may not want to be soft on bedbugs but the fact of the matter is that it costs more than it is actually worth. It has led to resistant bedbugs! According to Reinhardt, there is lot to learn about this profoundly misunderstood insect. The bizarre mating habits of bedbugs have recently led to the development of a homeopathic remedy to cure ovarian pain. It is well known that bedbug’s flatness had helped Einstein unravel the presence of infinity. 

The essential message from Bedbug relates to institutionalization of the fear of bedbugs in identifying other vermin in society from the aim of decimating them. Reinhardt hopes that pest and vermin metaphors will not be used to invite thoughts of social segregation and eradication – like the Jews annihilation in Germany and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Bedbug informs and entertains, suggesting tolerance as a means of controlling the bug. 

Bedbug
by Klaus Reinhardt
Reaktion Books, London
Extent: 184, Price: £12.95

First published in Current Science Vol. 117(06), dated Sep 25, 2019 

2 comments:

  1. Sounds fascinating - especially the part about bedbugs' mating habits leading to a homeopathic remedy for ovarian cancer - who could've imagined such stray dots meeting! Also - yet another interesting and well-written review! - Kunjana

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  2. Dr. Sharma, brilliantly written as always. Liked flares of satire as well. Trust the book will live upto the expectations raised by this review.

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