🔎 Field Notes: Kissing Bugs 🔎 (Patreon)

Our next episode on Tuesday, Nov. 9, is all about kissing bugs!

Producer Gabriela Quirós and cinematographer Josh Cassidy headed to Arizona in September to film these blood-sucking, dangerous insects. When bitten, their saliva can cause a potentially deadly allergic reaction called anaphylaxis.

Even worse, their poop can transmit the parasite that causes Chagas disease. Years after people get infected with the parasite, as many as one-third of them develop heart disease that can kill them, sometimes suddenly. Millions of people in Latin America have contracted Chagas, mainly from a handful of kissing bug species that live inside people’s homes – in cracks in the walls, in animal coops and even on beds. There are more than 130 species of kissing bugs and the insects live almost exclusively in the Americas.

Photo Credit: Josh Cassidy/KQED

But that didn’t stop Gabriela from volunteering to be bitten for this episode! Don’t worry. With the help of an expert on allergic reactions, Gabriela determined that she was an unlikely candidate for developing anaphylaxis from a kissing bug’s bite because she most likely had never been bitten by one before. In the photo above, you can see Gabriela’s arm next to the kissing bug after she let herself be bitten by one at Spider Pharm, a private lab in Arizona. After feeding on her, this bug thankfully pooped on the sheet Gabriela was using as a prop. In any case, she washed off with plenty of soap and water.

Photo Credit: Gabriela Quirós/KQED

Biologist Chuck Kristensen, owner of Spider Pharm, is working on ways to extract saliva from these insects. Kristensen will send the saliva to researchers at the University of Arizona who will try to figure out what in the saliva causes anaphylaxis. 

Photo Credit: Gabriela Quirós/KQED

In the photo above, a weak electric current stimulates a kissing bug to release saliva through its long mouth part, which Kristensen guides with a pair of tweezers. He collects the tiny droplets in a thin tube visible on the right.

A recent study in Tucson and Bisbee, Arizona, where kissing bugs commonly enter homes in the summer, found that 10% of people who had been bitten by the bugs had developed anaphylaxis. Symptoms include difficulty breathing, which can cause death if the patient isn’t treated right away with medication.

This episode premieres next Tuesday, November 9, but Patreon supporters will get a sneak peek this Friday!