The bedbug is normally nocturnal in habits and displays a certain degree of wariness, caution, and intelligence in its efforts at concealment during the day. Under the stress of hunger, however, it will emerge from its place of concealment in a well-lighted room at night, so that under such circumstances keeping the gas or electric light burning is not a complete protection. It has been known under similar conditions to attack human beings voraciously in broad daylight. It usually leaves its victim as soon as it has become engorged with blood and retires to its normal place of concealment, either in cracks in the bedstead, especially if the latter be one of the wooden variety, or behind wainscoting, or under loose wall paper, and in these and similar places it manifests its gregarious habit by collecting in masses. It thrives particularly in filthy apartments and in old houses which are full of cracks and crevices, in which it can conceal itself beyond easy reach. As just noted the old-fashioned, heavy, wooden-slatted bedsteads afford especially favorable situations for the concealment and multiplication of this insect, and the general use in later years of iron and brass bedsteads has very greatly facilitated its eradication. Such beds, however, do not insure safety, as the insects are able to find places of concealment even about such beds, or get to them readily from their other hiding places. Extraordinary stories are current of the remarkable intelligence of this insect in circumventing various efforts to prevent its gaining access to beds. Most of these are undoubtedly exaggerations, but the inherited experience of many centuries of companionship with man, during which the bedbug has always found its host an active enemy, has resulted in a knowledge of the habits of the human animal and a facility of concealment, particularly as evidenced by its abandoning beds and often going to distant quarters for protection and hiding during daylight, which indicate considerable apparent intelligence. Like its allies, the bedbug undergoes what is known as an incomplete metamorphosis. In other words, the insect from its larval to its adult stage is active and similar in form, structure, and habit, contrasting with flies and moths in their very diverse life stages of larva, chrysalis, or pupa, and winged adult. The eggs (fig. 3, _d_) are white oval objects having a little projecting rim around one edge and may be found in batches of from 6 to 50 in cracks and crevices where the parent bugs go for concealment. In confinement eggs may be deposited almost daily over a period of two months or more and commonly at the rate of from one to five eggs per day, but sometimes much larger batches are laid. As many as 190 eggs have been thus obtained from a single captured female.[5]