New bed bug photo from Lou Sorkin

Amazing new image from Lou Sorkin of the American Museum of Natural History:

Lou writes, in the photo description:

After feeding hundreds of bed bugs for around 10 minutes and watching many plump nymphs and adults crawl away from the top of the jar along the cardboard (inverted on my arm), I set the jar on the table and unscrewed the cover to see what happens to the rest of them.

They stay clumped like this for at least 10 minutes, and do not disperse even though I am not on the other side of the screen any longer. Some crawl over one another and appear to look for a better feeding position. Maybe there is a pheromone produced or maybe just a feeding frenzy behavior?

Thanks, once again, to Lou for sharing his knowledge and his amazing photos of bed bugs. And, of course, for his tireless efforts to educate the world about bed bugs, as evidenced in the comments here and here.

You can see Lou’s flickr photostream here.