Is this a bedbug?

September 29, 2012 7:16 AM

Is this a bedbug?

Photos with penny for scale.

This morning I woke up and went into the bathroom, where I felt this bug on my ankle. I don't know whether it was on my ankle in bed or just crawled there in the bathroom. When I shook it off, it just lay on the floor, only occasionally moving a tiny bit—clearly very near death.

There are no visible bite marks on my ankle, or anywhere else on my body that I can see.

It looks bigger than a bedbug, and the legs and especially the antennae do not look like the ones in pictures, but the resemblance is close enough that I'm freaking out.

posted by anonymous to home & garden (17 answers total)

I see those in my kitchen sometimes. Don't think it's a bedbug.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:28 AM on September 29, 2012

Looks bigger than the bedbugs I know.
posted by inkypinky at 7:35 AM on September 29, 2012

It could be, based on its dorsal side? The legs look too long to me, though -- more like a wee roach -- and it looks like it has antennae, which bedbugs don't have.

I would keep an eye out, and inspect your sheets/mattress for dots of blood or the blue-black pen-marking-like dots of bedbug excrement. But I don't think it is, based on those two photos.
posted by Greg Nog at 7:36 AM on September 29, 2012

It looks like a nymph cockroach to me.
posted by drlith at 7:36 AM on September 29, 2012 [3 favorites]

Or rather, bedbugs do have antennae, but I've never seen any so noticeably long and dark; those look more like roach antennae to me.
posted by Greg Nog at 7:37 AM on September 29, 2012

Those look like some of the roaches I've seen before.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 8:11 AM on September 29, 2012

Not a bedbug.
posted by hermitosis at 8:19 AM on September 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Can you turn it over and take a pic of its body?
posted by Sal and Richard at 8:29 AM on September 29, 2012

If it's sort of dry and thick with a rounded shell, it might be what I grew up calling an "isopod" but which was actually some kind of pillbug or woodlouse, often found in damp places. (I mean, they are isopods, but so are a lot of other things).

It doesn't look like a bedbug to me - wrong color, too round, wrong antennae - but if you continue to worry, you could post it to bedbugger.com, where there are lots of more expert people who will identify it for you.

Also, in general you need to have a fairly pervasive infestation before they're going to be clinging to you or turning up in the bathroom.
posted by Frowner at 8:40 AM on September 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

+1 for pillbug and not a bedbug.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 9:04 AM on September 29, 2012

Don't think so: bedbugs tend to have a head more distinctly isolated and defined from the thorax than that one seems to, and also are flatter than that fellow looks. Dunno what it is, exactly, but it looks like something other than a bedbug.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:29 AM on September 29, 2012

Definitely not a bedbug.

Based on the bottom photo, I might have guessed a woodlouse. But the top photo, though blurry, seems to show only 3 pairs of legs, which rules that out. Woodlice and other isopods have more pairs of legs than that. (Isopods are not insects at all; they're terrestrial crustaceans.)

Probably a roach, but not a typical American, Asian, or German cockroach; those have larvae whose antennae are longer than that. A proper identification would require better photos, or ideally, the specimen itself.
posted by brianogilvie at 10:54 AM on September 29, 2012

Looks like some kind of roach to me.
posted by entropyiswinning at 11:36 AM on September 29, 2012

That's a little cockroach, not a bed bug. Blattodeans, ie cockroaches, have hoods on their backs that cover their heads from the top-down view. Hemipterans or true bugs, which bed bugs are a member of, do not.

(Cockroaches also don't have piercing, sucking mouthparts, but the pronotal hood is the most obvious character in your photos.)
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 12:30 PM on September 29, 2012

(And brianogilvia is right, cockroaches usually have longer antennae, but they're also very easily broken.)
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 12:31 PM on September 29, 2012

Definitely, without a doubt, 100% not a bedbug. Among other things, a bedbug's legs are much closer to its head.

It does looks awfully cockroachy, though. Considering the circumstances in which you discovered it, do yourself a favour and do NOT google "cockroach ear."
posted by Sys Rq at 1:20 PM on September 29, 2012

Wee baby cockroach! Looks like an American cockroach nymph.
posted by bolognius maximus at 10:44 PM on September 29, 2012 [1 favorite]