Entomologist Dr Richard Naylor, 45, has spent years breeding the insects and letting them bite him in order to test pest control products from across the world
A brave scientist has dedicated his life to studying bed bugs by sleeping in a garden lab infested with the grim critters. Entomologist Dr Richard Naylor, 45, has spent years breeding the insects in order to test pest control products from across the world, and lets 60,000 of the tiny creatures eat him alive twice a week in a self-contained two-bedroom suite.
The bug loving doctor has been bitten “millions and millions” of times and has now developed immunity, although he does get symptoms of anaemia from time to time due to the blood loss.
Dr Naylor, who runs the not-for-profit Bed Bug Foundation with his wife Alexia from their home in Gloucestershire, explained exactly why he is able to put up with the constant bites.
He said: “I don’t react to the bites anymore. Apparently it takes something like 40,000 bites to stop reacting to bed bugs. And that for me was more than a decade ago. So I haven’t reacted for a long time. Over time, your immune system just stops reacting to it.
“For most people, it’s something like an angry mosquito bite, a bit more severe than a mosquito bite. But gradually it gets less and less, and I don’t get any swelling or inflammation anymore now.
A big part of Dr Naylor’s work involves breeding bed bugs, which he then sends around the world to help produce pest-control products and train dogs designed to sniff the creatures in hotels and homes, but he also conducts tests himself at home.
He said: “I can’t really test products on bed bugs without there being a host in the room because their behaviour completely changes. “If there’s no one around, bed bugs just sleep, they don’t move around, or they’re triggered by carbon dioxide from our breath and by our body heat – their behaviour is very tied to ours.
“Humans have been carrying bedbugs around for as long as humans have been in civilisation. And so if I want them to behave naturally, if I want to see how well a trap can lure in bed bugs in a bedroom setting, then I have to make it as realistic as possible. “
Dr Naylor feeds the insects twice a week by strapping pots containing hungry bedbugs to his arms with elastic bands, often while working on his computer or watching TV.
He said: “The bugs live in pots and the pots have metal lids, and I just elastic band them to my forearms or sometimes legs if I need more space, and they feed for a few minutes and I can’t really feel anything. After about ten minutes, when it looks like they’re all crawling back up the paper full of blood, then I swap them over, and I can feed thousands of bugs like that in not very long.”
Dr Naylor admits that lots of people get a bit squeamish when he tells them what he does for work, adding that “everyone starts scratching and seem a bit horrified.”
He explained: “I don’t really know any other pest that’s like it in terms of the fear it brings. I’ve talked to people in South America in malarial zones and they’re far more horrified by bedbugs than the mosquitoes that have the potential to make them very sick or kill them.”
One person who isn’t fussed about the bugs his Dr Naylor’s wife Naylor, although she draws the line at actually sleeping with the critters.
He said: “We have been together since I was 16, and back then my bedroom was filled with animals. So by now Alexia is quite accustomed to living we me. I don’t recall if she was even particularly surprised when I floated the idea of building a bedbug testing facility in the garden.
‘She shares some of my interest in bed bugs and the natural world generally, although she doesn’t sleep in the test rooms. “I have infested the family home four times in about 25 years. I think that’s not too bad going, given that we work with them almost every day.”