This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

If you're a savvy traveler, when you hunt for a hotel, you probably search trip advisor

for any mention of bed bugs, but here's the dirty secret behind

those bedbug sightings.

I mean the fact that roughly two-thirds of travelers can't pick a bedbug out of a lineup

tells you that probably in some cases these are you know unsubstantiated reports.

Mike Potter an entomology professor at the University of Kentucky.

He and his colleagues quizzed 2,000 business and leisure travelers on their bedbug ID skills through an online survey,

asking them to select the bedbug silhouette from a lineup that also included ants, termites, lice, and ticks.

And only a third of the respondents correctly nailed the bed bug.

And those incorrect insect IDs could hit hotel owners hard because more than half the

survey takers said they'd book a different hotel if they saw just one review

mentioning the bloodsuckers.

Potter's co-author Jared Penn, an economist.

The implications again of not knowing what a bed bug really is and just kind of jumping to the worst

conclusion. It can be costly for people. The studies in the journal American

Entomologist. Some cities like New York already require landlords to disclose

past bedbug infestations and 80% of survey respondents want hotels to do the

same even if the infestation is long gone.

Armed with that knowledge, good luck sleeping tight.

Thanks for listening.

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