Insects · Siphonaptera · Pulicidae

Human Flea

Pulex irritans

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

The common flea is a siphonapteran insect of the family Pulicidae. They are ectoparasites of warm-blooded vertebrates and feed on blood. It has a cosmopolitan distribution and a very wide range of hosts, humans included. It is in fact the flea species that most frequently parasitises humans, although it is not exclusive to our species, as might mistakenly be inferred from the common name given to Pulex irritans in various languages.

Diet

Carnivore

Feeds mainly on other animals.

Social structure

Solitary

Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

GrasslandCarnivore Solitary Insect Grassland

1same family

Fun facts

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.