Interesting flea facts
Article donated by Dr. Dave Thurgood, Tasman Bay Vets, Mapua
Fleas fossils have been found that are over 100 million years old! At that point in time there were, no dog, cats or humans to infest, only dinosaurs! So fleas certainly have the evolutionary jump on us. They have been surviving quite well when other species have become extinct, in fact things could not be better for the little critters. The 'stable' human home provides the perfect environment for fleas to live, while the high concentrations of small furry animals in our homes provides suitable hosts on which they can complete their lifecycles.
Contrary to popular belief, the flea does not spend most of its time on your
cats back, or in your dogs' ear.
The adult female flea will normally:
- jump on a host
- bite up to 400 times in the first day
- lay 50 eggs/day, that drop into host environment
- jump on and off the host at will, sometimes only spending a couple of hours on the animal
- ingest 15X its own weight in blood in one day
- can live for a year
Thus 10 fleas on your pet can produce 3500 eggs in a week. The dropped eggs quickly develop into adult fleas. At this time of the year with nice warm and moist weather this can take less than a month. As the weather warms up so do the fleas. They become more active and they can reproduce at a quicker rate.
Fleas inject your pets with saliva before sucking their blood. This flea saliva can cause a lot of irritation and allergies. Cats are particularly prone to flea allergy dermatitis, which often presents as multiple small scabs all over the base of the tail and sometimes over the cat's whole body. Animals with flea allergies require more frequent, year round flea control.
Prevention is the name of the game, animals need to be treated before they get infected. Once fleas are seen on your pet the environment is already overwhelmed with juvenile fleas. Fleas have been the bain of veterinary medicine in the past with so many formulations and collars being available to aid in the control of fleas. So many have been developed because none were really effective in killing fleas and many were toxic not only to the flea but also to the pet. The most effective and safest products on the market are Frontline, Advantage and Advantage Multi. They work by interrupting a stage in the reproductive cycle of the flea which only occurs in fleas and not mammals -hence they are more effective and much safer.