Cavemen battled bedbugs, study finds

Telegraph

28-05-2025

Cavemen suffered from bedbugs, according to a study.
The small insects have been plaguing human sleep for at least 50,000 years, but populations boomed when humans left caves behind and started forming basic cities, around 13,000 years ago.
A study on the genetics of bedbugs found the pest split into two lineages millennia ago, with one staying on bats and the other adapting to target sleeping people.
Both groups saw a decrease in numbers during the last Ice Age around 20,000 years ago, the scientists found.
Analysis of the genes of the two types of bedbugs revealed the bedbugs recovered at different rates depending on what animal they lived on. Bedbugs that lived in human beds fared better than those still living on bats, the scientists discovered.
Data reveals the bedbug association with humans 'dates back potentially hundreds of thousands of years', and around 13,000 years ago there was a population boom for bedbugs.
This is the same time their human hosts were starting to form primitive civilisations. It likely triggered the surge in bedbug numbers, the scientists conclude, because no boom was seen in bedbugs that lived on bats.
'Modern humans moved out of caves about 60,000 years ago,' said Dr Warren Booth, the study author from Virginia Tech.
'There were bedbugs living in the caves with these humans, and when they moved out they took a subset of the population with them, so there's less genetic diversity in that human-associated lineage.'
The two bedbug types have not yet diverged enough to become different species but are still undergoing evolution as a result of bug spray and other measures, which target and kill bedbugs, it added.
The study is published in the journal Biology Letters.