Fleas feed exclusively on warm blooded animals, drawing blood from their host by using their piercing mouth parts. As they pierce the skin they inject anti-blood clotting saliva to extract the blood of their host.
Fleas are known to carry disease and can also be responsible for the transmission of parasitic worms such as the dog tapeworm. In this country, however, fleas are not generally responsible for the spread of infection but do inflict on their host unpleasant bites.
Fleas can survive in a house, but where do they get their water? The only source is the air, and apparently they need plenty of it or their innards quickly turn into flea jerky.
Fleas have multiple life stages. Adult fleas eat blood meals and mate while living on a host animal. Fleas are different from lice in that lice are flattened dorsoventrally (ie they are short and fat). Fleas will float to the surface but drown because of the bit of shampoo in the water. This may help remove eggs as well.
Fleas have also had an important and surprising impact on human history. At least three Plague pandemics have been caused by a flea-transmitted pathogen, Yersinia pestis . Fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, bighting flies and other insects whom we hate and fear are far more ancient than we and our animal companions.
Our irrational flea-phobias and tick-terrors are fanned and inflamed by the profit-driven, multinational petrochemical-pharmaceutical industrial complex, that advertises nightly on TV to billions of viewers world wide to convince us of the need and wisdom of buying their poisons. Fleas can carry and transmit various allergies and disease. These can be passed to humans and other animals when the fleas bite.
Fleas can enter the home in many ways, even if your pet is not or only rarely allowed outside. They can hop in from your yard, hitch a ride on you, or even be left over from previous inhabitants (larvae can remain dormant for astonishingly long periods of time under a variety of conditions). Fleas in the house? How do you rid fleas? Fleas are ectoparasites, or parasites that live outside the body. Endoparasites, on the other hand, live inside the body.
Fleas in and around your home will feed on the blood of virtually any warm-blooded animal they encounter, including you and your pets. They can cause extreme discomfort and spread serious parasitic infections, like tapeworm . Fleas have no wings. The most noted flea characteristics are their medium brown to mahogany color and laterally flattened body.
Fleas feed on blood and although their mouth is small, a flea bite can hurt and most certainly can become inflamed, itchy and swollen. Many people, myself included, and many pets are allergic to flea bites.
Fleas are one of the most interesting and fascinating taxa of ectoparasites. All species in this relatively small order are obligatory haematophagous (blood-feeding) parasites of higher vertebrates. Fleas capable of transmitting the disease usually do so in the course of biting; less commonly, the plague organisms are transmitted when scratching the flea feces into bites or wounds.
Fleas are typically found where animals sleep or frequent, including along their usual avenue of travel, because this is where eggs and adult fecal blood accumulate. Most larvae will be found in similar places but especially in areas with high moisture which is necessary for their survival.
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