Fleas
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40 free Fleas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Fleas are tiny, but few animals have left a bigger mark. They can leap many times their own body length, they once starred in their own miniature circuses, and they have changed the course of human history more than once. This quiz covers the flea from every angle: its body and life cycle, the animals it lives on, the scientists and collectors who studied it, and its surprising appearances in poems, paintings, football and rock music. A good share of the questions deal with ticks as well, from how they find a host to the illnesses a bite can pass on. The questions are pitched so that children can enjoy them, with plenty for parents, teachers and pet owners too. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz works for a classroom, a science club or a family quiz night.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the United States, most fleas found on pet dogs belong to a species named after which other animal?
Cat
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.
Q 02A bite from the lone star tick can leave a person with a lasting allergy to which food?
Red meat
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.
Q 03Which body parts, found on most other insects, are missing from every flea, so it must jump instead?
Wings
Wings were lost over time: the ancestors of fleas had them, but modern fleas rely on powerful hind legs to leap onto passing hosts.
Q 04Fleas riding on rats helped spread which pandemic that killed over a third of Europe's people in the 1300s?
The Black Death
The Black Death reached Europe from Crimea, most likely with fleas living on the rats aboard Genoese trading ships.
Q 05Which Argentine footballer is nicknamed 'La Pulga', Spanish for 'The Flea', for his small size and speed?
Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi needed growth hormone treatment from the age of 11, and Spanish reporters later upgraded the nickname to 'The Atomic Flea'.
Q 06Ticks are not insects: like spiders and scorpions, they belong to which animal group?
Arachnids
Arachnids include ticks, whose head end and abdomen are fused into one rounded body that swells up as the tick feeds.
Q 07The term 'flea market' translates 'marché aux puces', the name of a secondhand bazaar in which city?
Paris
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.
Q 08Which intestinal parasite can a dog pick up by swallowing an infected flea while grooming itself?
Tapeworm
Tapeworm larvae grow inside the flea, and children occasionally catch the same parasite by accidentally swallowing one.
Q 09Which silent film star played a scruffy flea circus showman in a 1919 comedy that was never finished?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin abandoned the film after shooting a single reel, in which the fleas escape overnight and cause havoc in a flophouse.
Q 10The bassist Flea, nicknamed as a teenager who could not sit still, co-founded which Los Angeles rock band?
Red Hot Chili Peppers
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.
Q 11What do flea larvae build around themselves before becoming adults, where they can wait weeks for a host?
A cocoon
A cocoon spun by a flea larva is sticky, so it quickly picks up a disguise of dust and dirt from its surroundings.
Q 12Which gas, breathed out by people and pets, helps a newly emerged adult flea sense that a host is nearby?
Carbon dioxide
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.
Q 13Lyme disease, spread by tick bites, is named after a town in which US state, where cases clustered in 1975?
Connecticut
Connecticut doctors at first took the cluster of cases around the towns of Lyme and Old Lyme for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
Q 21In a typical flea infestation, which life stage makes up about half of the whole population?
Eggs
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.
Q 22The chigoe flea, the smallest flea known, burrows into human skin most often on which part of the body?
The feet
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.
Q 23Ticks are part of a larger group of which tiny creatures, which also includes chiggers?
Mites
Mites include the chigger, which is often confused with the jigger, a burrowing flea that is no relation at all.
Q 14The spreading skin rash that can follow a Lyme disease tick bite is often compared to which shape?
A bull's-eye
A bull's-eye forms when the rash clears from the centre outwards, and doctors call it erythema migrans, meaning migrating redness.
Q 15Which tool do doctors advise using to grasp an attached tick close to its head and pull it out?
Tweezers
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.
Q 16The blacklegged tick, the main carrier of Lyme disease in the United States, is nicknamed after which animal?
Deer
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.
Q 17Which mountain range gives its name to a spotted fever spread by American dog ticks and wood ticks?
Rocky Mountains
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.
Q 18Water fleas such as Daphnia are not insects at all but tiny members of which animal group?
Crustaceans
Crustaceans like Daphnia earned the flea nickname from their hopping style of swimming, and their see-through shells reveal a beating heart.
Q 19The oldest known tick fossils, around 100 million years old, were found preserved in which material?
Amber
Amber is fossilised tree resin, and pieces from Myanmar about 99 million years old hold some of the earliest ticks ever found.
Q 20Flea allergy dermatitis, a common itchy skin disease of pet dogs, is a reaction to which substance from a flea?
Saliva
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.
Q 24Which banking family built a collection of about 260,000 fleas, now kept at London's Natural History Museum?
Rothschild
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.
Q 25Which English scientist drew a flea as seen under a microscope for his pioneering 1665 book 'Micrographia'?
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke's book became the first scientific best-seller, and it also gave biology the word 'cell'.
Q 26Which craftsmen first made tiny carts for fleas to pull, as a way to show off their skill at miniature work?
Watchmakers
Watchmakers harnessed fleas to advertise their metalwork, and the idea grew into 19th-century shows with staged flea sword fights.
Q 27In a traditional flea circus, the ringmaster who delivers the rapid patter is usually known by which title?
Professor
Professor was the showman's title in flea circuses that drew crowds across Europe from the 1830s, with fleas hauling tiny chariots and cannon.
Q 28Which English poet, later Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, wrote the witty love poem 'The Flea'?
John Donne
John Donne probably wrote the poem in the 1590s while studying law, but it was only printed in 1633, two years after he died.
Q 29Which English poet and artist painted the tiny 'The Ghost of a Flea' after reportedly seeing it at a séance?
William Blake
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.
Q 30Fleas living on which animals time their own breeding by sensing pregnancy hormones in their host's blood?
Rabbits
Rabbits about to give birth trigger their fleas to mature, and the fleas then move onto the newborn young to feed and breed.