Many cimicids can go without food for long periods, one and a half years in some instances. This allows them to survive the winter at summer bat roosts even when the bats are hibernating elsewhere, and may be an important adaptive trait because of their limited dispersal ability. Cimicids have occasionally been observed clinging to the fore limbs of bats away from the roost, and this is likely to be the means by which the insects disperse. The cimicids have no special adaptations to enable them to travel in this way, however the only two members of the Primicimicinae subfamily, Bucimex chilensis and Primicimex cavernis have claws and an erect a row of peg-like spines on the tarsus, and have been observed clinging to the bat's pelage with these.
