MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

When I turned down the sheets on a hotel bed this morning I found this little critter, it was basically all black and 2mm long it moved across the fabric in short jerky movements, almost like a miniature robot After imaging it on my phone I crushed it, so there's no chance for further inspection and only a very poor quality image to look at! The body shape is very distinctive however and it is unlike any bedbug images I can find, but needless to say, I worry that it was. Can anyone identify what this may have been?
Thanks
Michael

this is why you always need to pack some specimen jars when you travel

It doesn't look like one to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_bug#/ ... larius.jpg

Yes Bram, a sample vial would have been handy, they were in the car though, not the bedroom.

Don, thanks for your reassurance, it certainly doesn't look like any "bed-bug" image I've found, leaving alive the mystery of just what this creature was?
Michael

That looks a lot like a top-down view of a flea to me. The rear legs are thicker than normal, but that could be an artifact of the low-res capture. What sells it as a flea to me is the clear division of the head from the body, the placement of the eyes, and the bulge in the abdomen. That's what a flea looks like when it's had a bite to eat.