TIME Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.

Current subscribers for full access. Not a TIME subscriber? .

Animals: Cimex Lectularius

Bedbugs are worth 12½¢ apiece, or 2½¢ more than grasshoppers. This valuation was announced last week when the University of Pittsburgh paid a bill for laboratory insect specimens. No sooner had the news been published than the University began receiving shipments of bedbugs. Many people who had hitherto ignored the bedbug acquired an academic curiosity about him, wondered just what he was.

"Bedbug" is an intimate name for a small incredibly vicious insect of the hemipterous family Cimicidae. He is oval, fat, wingless and rich brown. He has piercing suctorial mouth-parts. The bedbug of...

Time.com on Digg

POWERED BY digg

Quotes of the Day »

DAVID CAMERON, British Prime Minister, on England's soccer manager, Fabio Capello, who resigned after challenging the FA's decision to strip John Terry of the captaincy; Terry denies a charge of racially abusing QPR's Anton Ferdinand
For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish.