Human Flea

• Its role in the great plague epidemics has been debated for decades: the models that best reproduce the speed at which the Black Death spread across Europe implicate human fleas and lice, and not the rat flea alone.
• It was the star of the flea circuses of the nineteenth century, harnessed to tiny carts and wheels to exploit its extraordinary strength.
• Its decline in western Europe is down to the spread of hard flooring, the vacuum cleaner and frequent washing of bedding.
• Despite its name, it is now rare in industrialised countries and turns up more often on pigs, dogs and other mammals than on people.
• It is not an efficient disease vector, but it is an intermediate host of two tapeworms, Dipylidium caninum and Hymenolepis nana.
• The larvae are not parasitic: they live free in the ground eating organic debris, including the dried droppings of the adults.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Houses, pens and burrows, on people, pigs and other mammals

Sexual maturity

The adults emerge from the cocoon already sexually mature; development from egg to adult was completed in about 12 days in the reference observations

Gestation / incubation

The eggs hatch 4 to 6 days after laying

Litter / clutch size

8 to 12 eggs per clutch; up to 448 eggs have been recorded over 196 days

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Pulex irritans · Animal Diversity Web · Marquardt et al. 2000 via UF/IFAS EDIS EENY-798 · Animal Diversity Web (Univ. of Michigan), Pulex irritans · UF/IFAS EDIS EENY-798 (Wyrwa 2011) · EBSCO Research Starters, ficha Human flea · Animal Diversity Web, Pulex irritans