Malaysian Scientists Turn Bedbugs into Crime Scene Spies

By Danial Martinus • 26 Nov 2025 in News

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(source: AFP / South China Morning Post)

Malaysian scientists are turning bedbugs, one of the world’s most hated household pests, into crime-fighting “detectives” or “witnesses” of sorts.

Researchers at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang have discovered that tropical bedbugs can retain human DNA for up to 45 days after feeding.

From a forensic POV, it’s almost a silver bullet

Bedbugs often hide in the dark crevices of headboards and in the tiny seams of mattresses, and they could actually help investigators identify both victims and suspects in a crime.

“We call bedbugs the musuh dalam selimut (Malay for ‘the enemy in the blanket’),” says entomologist Abdul Hafiz Ab Majid. “They can also be spies.”

Using STR and SNP markers to analyse blood found inside the insects, scientists can extract what’s known as “phenotypic profiling”, which identifies observable traits like gender, eye colour, hair colour, and skin tone.

Making the discovery even more promising is the fact that bedbugs are rather sluggish after feeding, which means they won’t leave the site of their last meal very soon. And even if they do, they don’t go very far. Usually they move within a six-metre radius of their last bite.

“That’s what makes them unique. We can say they are perfect to use as a forensic tool compared to mosquitoes that fly away,” Hafiz explained.

Postdoctoral researcher Lim Li has even offered her own body for this experiment, letting bedbugs feed on her blood to test how long it would take human DNA to degrade. But she also thinks the insects are misunderstood, stressing that “even if you get bitten, they can’t transmit diseases to you”.

The real world potential is exciting: crime scene investigators could treat bedbugs as living evidence to a certain extent, offering important clues when other biological traces are unavailable. This could be especially useful in violent crimes or in identifying unknown victims.

It isn’t a 100% foolproof solution, though. As mentioned before, bedbugs can only hold human DNA in their bodies for up to 45 days. Investigations often take much, much longer than that. Plus, you’d have to rely on the chance of there being bedbugs at the crime scene, which isn’t such a feasible practice.

But before this method can be put to use in real-world investigations, more research needs to be done to refine DNA extraction techniques and improve reliability across different environments.