Study: Bed Bugs Have Favorite Colors, Too!

Do bed bugs have favorite colors? The answer is apparently, yes!

Bed bugs generally prefer hiding spots that are red or black, but their preferences change according to age, sex, and other factors, Science Daily reports.

The common bed bug is a nest parasite which most of the time seeks out crevices to hide in. These areas are marked by dark spots and staining from the dried excrement of the bugs.

Further explaining how bed bugs behave, Entomology at University of Kentucky notes that their flattened bodies enable them to fit into tiny crevices, especially those associated with mattresses, box springs, bed frames and headboards.

And while many of us might think that bed bugs do not have habitat preferences, researchers from the University of Florida and Union College in Lincoln revealed the opposite.

In an experiment, the researchers placed a bed bug in a petri dish with the colored harborages - black, red, white, yellow, green. After ten minutes, the bug quickly crawled to the black or red mini-tents.

"We originally thought the bed bugs might prefer red because blood is red and that's what they feed on," said Dr. Corraine McNeill, one of the co-authors, in a statement.

"However, after doing the study, the main reason we think they preferred red colors is because bed bugs themselves appear red, so they go to these harborages because they want to be with other bed bugs, as they are known to exist in aggregations."

The authors suggest that bed bugs might have avoided yellow and green colors because they resemble brightly-lit areas and bugs love to hide in dark places, Eurekaalert notes.

Although the aforementioned could be a plausible explanation, the reserachers emphasized that bugs' color preferences change as they grew older and males and females seemed to prefer different colors.

The findings however, may eventually help lead to better ways to control bed bugs, McNeill suggested.

"We are thinking about how you can enhance bed bug traps by using monitoring tools that act as a harborage and are a specific color that is attractive to the bug," said McNeill.

"However, the point isn't to use the color traps in isolation, but to use color preference as something in your toolkit to be paired with other things such as pheromones or carbon dioxide to potentially increase the number of bed bugs in a trap."

Dawn Gouge, an associate professor of urban entomology at the University of Arizona, told CNN that using suitcases with hard exteriors may save your luggage from being inhabited by bed bugs whenever traveling and staying in a hotel.