DURING A FLEA INFESTATION, TREATING YOUR PET ISN’T ENOUGH.
Without a doubt, fleas are your enemy and knowing the enemy is the first step towards defeating them. Below is our list of some strange, informative, and disconcerting facts about these little creeps.
- Fleas are wingless insects that get onto hosts by jumping.
- Fleas have been on this planet for approximately 100 million years.
- There are over 2,000 species and subspecies of fleas (that we know of).
- In almost all species of fleas, the females are larger than the males.
- In the continental United States, the Cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis) is responsible for nearly all of the fleas found on both cats and dogs.
- If you find a flea on your cat or dog, there could be an infestation on your pets and around your home. Adult fleas are only a small percentage of the total population of a given infestation.
- A female flea can consume 15 times its body weight (in blood) on a daily basis.
- A female flea lays eggs within 35 to 48 hours of its first blood meal.
- Flea eggs are usually laid directly on a host, often falling off the host’s body and spreading the infestation to the surrounding environment.
- A female flea can lay about 2,000 eggs over the course of its life, but is incapable of laying eggs until after its first meal.
- Once adult fleas emerge from their puparia, they have approximately 7 days to find a blood meal or they die.
- Your average flea will have a 2 to 3 month lifespan.
- If it doesn’t have to move around much, a flea can live anywhere between 2 months and 100 days between meals.
- If they were human sized athletes participating in the long jump in the Olympics, certain fleas could break the current world record by approximately 970 feet.