40 Fun Facts About Fleas

In the United States, most fleas found on pet dogs belong to a species named after which other animal?

Cat fleas made up every one of the 244 fleas collected from 29 dogs in one Virginia study, and the same species readily bites people too.

A bite from the lone star tick can leave a person with a lasting allergy to which food?

Red meat can set off the allergy because the tick's bite makes the body react to alpha-gal, a sugar in beef, pork and lamb. Reactions often start hours after the meal.

Which body parts, found on most other insects, are missing from every flea, so it must jump instead?

Wings were lost over time: the ancestors of fleas had them, but modern fleas rely on powerful hind legs to leap onto passing hosts.

Fleas riding on rats helped spread which pandemic that killed over a third of Europe's people in the 1300s?

The Black Death reached Europe from Crimea, most likely with fleas living on the rats aboard Genoese trading ships.

Which Argentine footballer is nicknamed 'La Pulga', Spanish for 'The Flea', for his small size and speed?

Lionel Messi needed growth hormone treatment from the age of 11, and Spanish reporters later upgraded the nickname to 'The Atomic Flea'.

Ticks are not insects: like spiders and scorpions, they belong to which animal group?

Arachnids include ticks, whose head end and abdomen are fused into one rounded body that swells up as the tick feeds.

The term 'flea market' translates 'marché aux puces', the name of a secondhand bazaar in which city?

Paris gave the market its name because the worn, secondhand goods sold there were believed to harbour fleas. English borrowed the phrase word for word.

Which intestinal parasite can a dog pick up by swallowing an infected flea while grooming itself?

Tapeworm larvae grow inside the flea, and children occasionally catch the same parasite by accidentally swallowing one.

Which silent film star played a scruffy flea circus showman in a 1919 comedy that was never finished?

Charlie Chaplin abandoned the film after shooting a single reel, in which the fleas escape overnight and cause havoc in a flophouse.

The bassist Flea, nicknamed as a teenager who could not sit still, co-founded which Los Angeles rock band?

Red Hot Chili Peppers began with four classmates from Fairfax High School, and the band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

What do flea larvae build around themselves before becoming adults, where they can wait weeks for a host?

A cocoon spun by a flea larva is sticky, so it quickly picks up a disguise of dust and dirt from its surroundings.

Which gas, breathed out by people and pets, helps a newly emerged adult flea sense that a host is nearby?

Carbon dioxide, body warmth and vibrations all signal a meal, which is why a whole crowd of waiting fleas can emerge at once when a host arrives.

Lyme disease, spread by tick bites, is named after a town in which US state, where cases clustered in 1975?

Connecticut doctors at first took the cluster of cases around the towns of Lyme and Old Lyme for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

The spreading skin rash that can follow a Lyme disease tick bite is often compared to which shape?

A bull's-eye forms when the rash clears from the centre outwards, and doctors call it erythema migrans, meaning migrating redness.

Which tool do doctors advise using to grasp an attached tick close to its head and pull it out?

Tweezers are the safe choice: burning a tick with a match or smothering it in petroleum jelly while it is still attached is advised against.

The blacklegged tick, the main carrier of Lyme disease in the United States, is nicknamed after which animal?

Deer are the favourite hosts of the adult ticks, but the ticks pick up the Lyme bacteria earlier in life from small animals such as mice.

Which mountain range gives its name to a spotted fever spread by American dog ticks and wood ticks?

Rocky Mountains cases were the first to be identified, in the 1800s, but the fever has since been diagnosed across the United States and in Central and South America.

Water fleas such as Daphnia are not insects at all but tiny members of which animal group?

Crustaceans like Daphnia earned the flea nickname from their hopping style of swimming, and their see-through shells reveal a beating heart.

The oldest known tick fossils, around 100 million years old, were found preserved in which material?

Amber is fossilised tree resin, and pieces from Myanmar about 99 million years old hold some of the earliest ticks ever found.

Flea allergy dermatitis, a common itchy skin disease of pet dogs, is a reaction to which substance from a flea?

Saliva from a flea carries about 15 substances that can cause an allergy, and in a sensitive pet a single bite is enough to start the itching.

In a typical flea infestation, which life stage makes up about half of the whole population?

Eggs account for roughly 50% of a flea population and adults only about 5%, which is why treating the pet alone rarely clears an infestation.

The chigoe flea, the smallest flea known, burrows into human skin most often on which part of the body?

The feet suffer most because the chigoe flea is a poor jumper, reaching only about 20 cm, and lives in sand where people walk barefoot.

Ticks are part of a larger group of which tiny creatures, which also includes chiggers?

Mites include the chigger, which is often confused with the jigger, a burrowing flea that is no relation at all.

Which banking family built a collection of about 260,000 fleas, now kept at London's Natural History Museum?

Rothschild banker Charles described around 500 kinds of flea, and his daughter Miriam, a flea expert herself, co-wrote the illustrated catalogue of the collection.

Which English scientist drew a flea as seen under a microscope for his pioneering 1665 book 'Micrographia'?

Robert Hooke's book became the first scientific best-seller, and it also gave biology the word 'cell'.

Which craftsmen first made tiny carts for fleas to pull, as a way to show off their skill at miniature work?

Watchmakers harnessed fleas to advertise their metalwork, and the idea grew into 19th-century shows with staged flea sword fights.

In a traditional flea circus, the ringmaster who delivers the rapid patter is usually known by which title?

Professor was the showman's title in flea circuses that drew crowds across Europe from the 1830s, with fleas hauling tiny chariots and cannon.

Which English poet, later Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, wrote the witty love poem 'The Flea'?

John Donne probably wrote the poem in the 1590s while studying law, but it was only printed in 1633, two years after he died.

Which English poet and artist painted the tiny 'The Ghost of a Flea' after reportedly seeing it at a séance?

William Blake painted it in tempera and gold on a wooden panel barely 21 cm tall, and it is kept at the Tate in London.

Fleas living on which animals time their own breeding by sensing pregnancy hormones in their host's blood?

Rabbits about to give birth trigger their fleas to mature, and the fleas then move onto the newborn young to feed and breed.

The tiny dark 'snow fleas' seen on top of snow on warm winter days are not fleas but which creatures?

Springtails leap with a tail-like lever folded beneath the body, and they are no longer even counted as insects.

Which sap-sucking insects, also known as spittlebugs, are rated even better jumpers than fleas for their size?

Froghoppers spend their youth hidden in blobs of foam, often called cuckoo spit, that they whip up from plant sap.

What does a newly hatched tick larva gain after its first blood meal, when it molts into a nymph?

Two more legs bring the total to eight, because tick larvae hatch with only six, the same count as an insect.

What do scientists call a tick's ambush pose, clinging to grass with outstretched legs until a host passes?

Questing ticks pick a height to suit their target: young ones wait near the ground for mice and birds, while adults climb higher for larger animals.

The lone star tick is named not for Texas but for which marking on the adult female's back?

A white spot shaped a little like a star sits on the female's shield, while males have pale streaks or spots around the edges.

Which speckled African birds are used as natural tick control because they eat the pests in huge numbers?

Guineafowl come from Africa south of the Sahara, and the helmeted kind is the species sold as poultry in Western supermarkets.

Which rubbery protein in a flea's body stores energy like a drawn bow and releases it to power each jump?

Resilin loses only about 3% of the energy it stores as heat, letting a flea take off faster than muscle power alone would allow.

Which insect order, named partly from the Greek word for a tube, contains every species of flea?

Siphonaptera takes the first half of its name from the flea's tube-like mouthparts, which pierce skin and suck up blood.

Genetic studies suggest fleas are a specialised branch of which group of predatory and scavenging insects?

Scorpionflies include the closest living relatives of fleas: one small Southern Hemisphere family has the same style of mouthparts.

Ticks detect the smell and warmth of a passing animal using Haller's organ, found on which part of the body?

The front legs carry the organ at their tips, and it can even pick up the infrared light given off by a warm body.