Taxonomy Tournament: Insects

Hemiptera. This order is also known as the true bugs. Members include cicadas, aphids, bedbugs, and assassin bugs.

Hymenoptera. This order is made up of wasps, ants, and bees. Their mouthparts are adapted for chewing, or in many species have become a proboscis for sucking nectar.

Me and my weird cousin had to kill an infestation of bed bugs via a giant laser beam.

The Paris bed bugs after the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics

celebs please shelter in place wherever tf u are

As someone who also really likes most bugs, I gotta say I do not know how bedbugs reproduce and now I'm gonna avoid learning it simply so I can hopefully learn it from you someday!

I hope the Stray Kids members in Paris for fashion week don’t come home with some stray bugs.

Man found dead eaten by bed bugs

The family of Lashawn Thompson, 35, is calling for a criminal investigation into Thompson’s death and for the closure and replacement of a local jail after alleging that Thompson died in custody from bed bugs in a squalid jail cell.

Thompson was incarcerated at the Fulton county Jail in Atlanta on a misdemeanour charge. Jail officials had placed Thompson in the facility’s psychiatric unit after determining that he had mental health issues, but noted that he was physically healthy.

On 13 September 2022, three months after being arrested, Thompson was discovered dead inside a dilapidated cell covered in grime and insects. The cell was so filthy that an employee wore a hazmat suit upon entering.

“They left him there essentially,” said Michael Harper, a lawyer representing the Thompson family, “and they had a plan to take him to the medical observation unit, but their plan never happened, and they found him dead, eaten by these bed bugs.”

Thompson’s family, who live in Alabama, had not known Thompson was incarcerated and only found out when authorities notified them about his death.  Authorities were not able to resuscitate Thompson in his cell. A later autopsy did not determine a cause of death but noted that there were “extremely severe” infestation of small insects on Thompson’s body and a “severe bed bug infestation” in Thompson’s cell. The report also confirmed that Thompson had signs of cuts and wounds along his body from picking his skin. Graphic photos released by Harper show the horrific condition of Thompson’s cell and Thompson covered in bugs.

Brad McCrae, Thompson’s brother, said that the family found the photos distressing to look at during a press conference on Thursday, WSB-TV reported. “It was heart-breaking because nobody should be seen like that. Nobody should see that,” said McCrae.

In a statement to the WSB-TV, the Fulton county sheriff’s office said that they had launched a full investigation into Thompson’s death and had committed $500,000 to address vermin outbreaks in the jail. The sheriff’s office added that after an investigation, the Georgia bureau of investigations would determine if any criminal charges are warranted. The family said that while they appreciated efforts to improve jail conditions, more needed to be done.

“If you look at those pictures, how deplorable that jail cell was, how did they get to that point in the first place?” said Harper “It’s not fit for an animal.”

🇫🇷 @reniadeb 🇫🇷

me: I am only a little traumatized by my bed bug experience

me, checking into a hotel: okay the bed does look good but all the bags go into the tub anyway. everything in the tub. my phone gets to live in the tub overnight. pajamas are in a sealed ziploc and will go back in there come morning. constant vigilance

Taxonomy Tournament: Insects

Phthiraptera. This clade is made up of lice, small wingless parasites of nearly every bird and mammal.

Hemiptera. This order is also known as the true bugs. Members include cicadas, aphids, bedbugs, and assassin bugs.

bedbugs love ket!

for @razzzberriess

Bug Brawl

Why you should vote for them:

Bed Bug

Historical reasons. Bug comes from the Middle English bugge "something frightening", so people started calling the tiny creatures that crawled into their beds to suck their blood at night "bed bugs". So bed bugs are the reason we call insects bugs in the first place.

Red Velvet Ant

I asked my friend who's getting her PhD in biology and studying butterflies what her favorite bug is and she said these wasps, apparently their carapaces are hard to pierce, really painful sting, they're super cool looking, they squeak to show alarm? huge sexual dimorphism too, the females are wingless, hence the name velvet ant. they're also parasitic! they'll lay their eggs in other wasp nests and their babies eat other wasp grubs

omg the paris metro bed bug outbreak is real. i thought it was propaganda from the hotels

Uuuh…I took a Bath…and now I’m very eepy…zzzzz….