This kissing bug isn’t going to give you a loving peck when it sticks you with that tucked-away proboscis.
It could actually make you really sick, even kill you.
It makes its move at night, while you’re sleeping.
It likes your warm body.
Kissing bugs get their name because they often bite near the lips or eyes, but they’ll dig in anywhere you’ve left uncovered.
A little anesthetic guarantees you won't wake up while they feed on you for 10, 20, even 30 minutes.
Every kissing bug needs several huge meals during the year or two it lives.
As it gulps, its exoskeleton stretches like a balloon, to fit up to 12 times its weight in blood.
This pliability is called plasticization.
How it started.
How it’s going.
All that hot liquid could stress an insect’s body and stunt its growth.
So the kissing bug cools it down – inside its head.
Your warm blood flows in.
The cool insect blood, called hemolymph, absorbs the heat and releases it through the top of the bug’s long head.
In this infrared video, you can see the blood cool down by more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit before it reaches the bug’s abdomen.
So the bug is safe.
You, on the other hand, are not.
It injects saliva as it sucks your blood.
Here’s a scientist squeezing some out.
The saliva has proteins that can give people a deadly allergic reaction called anaphylaxis.
And it gets much, much worse.
OK.
This is super gross.
After eating – sometimes while it’s eating – the bug poops.
And that poop – and urine – might contain the parasite that causes Chagas disease.
If the bug’s victim rubs these feces and urine into the bite wound or their eyes, the parasite can infect them.
Years later, as many as one third of the people who got the parasite develop heart disease that can kill them, sometimes suddenly.
Pregnant women can even pass the parasite onto their babies.
Few contract the parasite in the U.S., even though kissing bugs live here.
But in Latin America, millions of people have become infected.
There, kissing bugs are known by many different names: chinche besucona … chinche … pito … vinchuca … barbeiro.
In rural areas, these kissing bug species live in people’s homes, in the cracks of the walls.
And in animal coops.
Spraying has helped bring down infections.
But hundreds of thousands of people have left their home countries for the U.S., not knowing the bug gave them the parasite.
A simple blood test can find it and medications can often kill it.
In the American Southwest, the bugs live in the nests of wild animals, like this pack rat den in Arizona, where biologists Anita and Chuck Kristensen collect them.
Chuck Kristensen (off camera): Kissing bug, kissing bug!
Chuck Kristensen (off camera): Genuine kissing bug.
For the most part, they feed on the pack rats.
But in late spring and summer, the bugs sometimes travel from these nests into someone’s home.
So sealing off your house, with screens on your windows – and even vents –, is one way to keep out these stealthy bloodsuckers.
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