No one wants unwanted visitors in their bed.
We’ve all been there. No one can predict what little creatures can infest our kitchens, walls and unfortunately, sometimes our beds.
did you ever have bed bugs?
— Her.ie (@Herdotie) April 27, 2016
But is there a way to prevent one type of creature, the dreaded bed bug in your bedroom? According to scientists, apparently so.
Researchers from the University of Florida and Union College in Lincoln made small tent-like structures from coloured card and placed them in Petri dishes.
Bed bugs were then placed into the Petri dishes and were given 10 minutes to choose one of the coloured tents.
The results showed that the bed bugs gravitated towards the colours black and red, but they seemed to avoid the colours green, yellow and white.
In the study, scientists speculated that a bed bug would go to any tent in an attempt to hide however “these colour experiments show that bed bugs do not hide in just any harbourage; rather, they will select a harbourage based on its colour when moving in the light.”
Dr Corraine McNeill, one of the co-authors, added: “We originally thought the bed bugs might prefer red because blood is red and that’s what they feed on.
“However, after doing the study, the main reason we think they preferred red colours is because bed bugs themselves appear red, so they go to these harbourages because they want to be with other bed bugs, as they are known to exist in aggregations.”
If you don’t want any bed pests, get your sheet together ladies and buy new bedware.
