"Mice are the same as rats."

No!

Rats will eat mice.

"You can't see a bedbug with your naked eye."

Yes, you can.

"A cockroach needs its head to survive."

You know, a cockroach can survive

for up to a week without a head.

Hi, I'm Jim Skinner. I'm the owner of A&C Pest Management.

It's a third-generation pest-management company

that specializes in green approaches.

I'm also an associate certified entomologist.

I've been doing this for 35 years.

I'm Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann. I'm an entomologist,

and I'm also the coordinator of community IPM

at the New York state IPM program at Cornell.

And I've been in this job for over 20 years,

working with bedbugs and structural pests.

And today, we're going to be debunking myths about pests.

"All mosquitoes bite."

Only female mosquitoes bite.

Female mosquitoes bite humans

because they need the protein

in order to produce their eggs.

Some mosquitoes actually feed on certain leeches,

certain frogs.

There's so many different types of mosquitoes.

There's only a few mosquitoes that actually feed on humans.

So, what would I do to protect myself?

Well, at the very least, you should be wearing

long sleeves and long pants

if the weather's appropriate,

and if not, you should be wearing repellents.

"Mosquitoes keep biting you because you're sweet."

Are you sweet?

I am sweet, but they actually prefer to feed on my wife

more so than they do me.

Mosquitoes are pretty much like we are.

When we pull off a parkway, you'll see a big McDonald's,

you'll see a Burger King, you'll see pizzerias.

Whatever they're in the mood for on that particular day

is what they're going to go after.

And it probably has a lot to do

with what that person has eaten.

True. Everyone puts off a different pheromone,

and those pheromones

are everything that we've ever eaten in our lives,

all the little sicknesses we've had in our lives,

and that's what they're mostly attracted to.

Carbon dioxide and lactic acid are both

components of human breath and animal breath

that attracts mosquitoes, without a doubt.

So if you are breathing and the plume of your breath

goes in a certain direction,

mosquitoes will follow that back to you.

"Head lice jump from one person to another."

OK. Well, head lice are not jumpers the way fleas are.

Head lice can only crawl.

But head lice do transfer from person to person

when there's head-to-head contact or brushes shared,

or even hats shared in the wintertime,

or even in an elementary school

where the coats are all stored together in the wintertime.

With head lice, it's not a pest-control issue

as much as it is a health issue.

The best way to get rid of lice is to use combing.

A lice comb is a fine-toothed comb.

There's really no space between the teeth of the comb,

so when you comb it through hair,

it catches every little thing.

And so it will catch the nits.

It's designed to be small enough to catch the nits.

Just got to make sure you get real close to the scalp

when you use it.

The other treatment for lice is to warm the head,

to actually blow-dry the hair.

They're pretty delicate creatures.

We don't treat the inside of homes for lice

because their life expectancy is so short.

The life expectancy of a louse off of the body

is about 36 hours.

What you'd do in a situation like that: take the bedding,

wrap it up, put it into the dryer.

Most dryers are 140 degrees or hotter,

and they'll just kill them right then.

What's our next one? [gasps]

"Mice are the same as rats."

No!

Absolutely not.

They are definitely different animals,

and they generally don't coexist in the same places,

because rats will eat mice.

Mice are not baby rats, either.

A baby mouse has very big ears for its size,

whereas rats have very tiny ears.

Skinner: Take a look at the back foot, the back leg.

The foot's a lot longer on a rat than it is a mouse.

You take a look at a snout; a rat snout is a lot more blunt.

Gangloff-Kaufmann: Mice can carry diseases like hantavirus,

and they do in this country.

Rats can bite people and have caused deaths of babies.

What's the importance of knowing the difference?

From a pest-control standpoint,

if you want to kill your enemy, you have to know your enemy.

Am I going to use a mouse snap trap,

or am I going to use a rat snap trap?

Because if I use a mouse snap trap,

that rat could probably use it as a ski.

You've got to know the biology in order to conquer them.

"Having cats will keep mice away."

I think it really depends on the kind of cat you have,

because a big, happy, fat house cat

is not probably going to do much about mice.

What I've discovered, though,

is that a cat that is good at chasing mice

will just force the mice to hide from the cat

and be in the walls and places inaccessible to the cat.

So there probably aren't too many good arguments to be made

for having a cat to keep the mice away.

If you have a cat that was born and bred

on feeding on mice and things along those lines,

that's different, but usually those are outside cats.

I would think a rat

would put up a really good fight with a cat.

And it's not the scratching so much, but the biting.

So we do encourage people to keep their cats indoors,

and do not rely on them for mouse control.

No.

Call a professional.

Call a professional.

"Cheese is the most effective lure for mice."

[laughing]

Gangloff-Kaufmann: No. Skinner: Not!

So, what is the most effective lure, in your opinion?

Me, I absolutely love peanut butter,

as long as there's no peanut-butter allergies

within that home or the area that I'm treating with.

Sometimes we'll use things like bacon, chocolate, oatmeal.

Sometimes they don't even go after food,

so what we'll do is put in cotton balls.

So we'll tie that right down to the trap,

and what they'll do is they'll go after the cotton ball

and try to use it for nesting material.

It depends upon the environment.

Sometimes you need to use sweets;

sometimes you need to use meats.

"A cockroach needs its head to survive."

You know, a cockroach can survive

for up to a week without a head.

Isn't that remarkable?

I don't wait that long. I just step on them.

Gangloff-Kaufmann: One of the reasons is because

a cockroach's brain is distributed through its body

in little groups of ganglia, or nerves.

But a cockroach will eventually die without its head,

because it can't do what?

Eat.

That's right. It can't eat, it can't drink,

and it will eventually run out of juice.

It'll run out of energy, it will dehydrate,

and it will starve.

Why is it important to get rid of cockroaches?

It's such a health hazard.

They're picking up every little thing

on the hair follicles of their body,

and as they do, they're walking over your food,

and they're sharing it with you.

That's No. 1.

No. 2, it's going to defecate.

And when it defecates, that fecal matter dries up.

And when that dries up, it becomes airborne,

and we get to breathe it in.

How gross is that?

But it's the reason why inner-city kids

have the highest rate of asthma.

Cockroach management in the integrated sense

is to locate their harborages, clean those places,

and then to put out baits that will then kill them,

and then to clean again.

"You can't see a bedbug with your naked eye."

Yes, you can.

Here's a full-grown bedbug, and here's a dime.

Right? So you can definitely see it.

These are adult bedbugs, glued to this dish

so we can demonstrate how big adult bedbugs are.

The adult bedbug is about the size of a lentil.

The smallest bedbug,

and they go through several stages of growth,

but the smallest, newly hatched one

is about the size of a poppy seed.

And we have poppy seeds right here.

That's how tiny baby bedbugs are.

But, unfortunately, they're about the color of the bagel.

Skinner: Same color!

Gangloff-Kaufmann: Instead of the color of the poppy seed.

"You have ants because your house isn't clean."

If you have spills and crumbs and pet food laying around,

you can find ants foraging in your house, definitely.

But, really, people get ants

because the outside environment has ants.

And ants are naturally curious foragers.

They're always looking for water or food.

You might have a clean house with no sugar

and no crumbs around, but they may still appear

looking for those things.

And it also depends upon the type of ant.

In fact, you might have carpenter ants,

well, because you have a moisture leak somewhere.

Might be a window, a doorframe, a soffit.

Gangloff-Kaufmann: The odorous house ant [Skinner groans]

will come in and nest around warm appliances

and around the boiler.

And they like moisture too,

but they really like the warmth, especially in January.

We don't recommend anything like homemade remedies

or vinegar. That's not going to kill ants.

Bleach will not kill ants. Ammonia will not kill ants.

You need a real ant bait.

And some of the ant baits we have today are so good

that they work in tiny doses.

"You can feel a tick bite when it happens."

I got to be honest with you.

I've been bit by ticks multiple times.

I've never once felt a tick bite.

In their saliva, ticks have an anesthetic.

And they also have a blood thinner,

so they can feed on you in a stealth way,

so you don't feel it,

and the blood will not coagulate when they're eating.

However, I think I'm pretty allergic

to lone star tick bites.

Really?

Yeah, I get a big welt.

How would you know if you have a tick on you?

So, the biggest thing is doing a tick inspection.

Feels like a skin tag.

Skinner: You could feel your arms, your legs,

you've got to check in between your toes, in your armpits,

even your groin area you have to check.

Gangloff-Kaufmann: If you get bitten by a tick

and it is embedded in your skin,

we recommend using fine-point tweezers,

like these. They're strong.

And to pull from the base of that tick's mouth

straight up.

And that's as close to the skin as possible

and straight up.

"All ticks will give you Lyme disease."