Fleas Pest Control
Blood-feeding arthropods like the Common Flea are of great concern to the public not only because of their annoying and often painful bites but more importantly because many are vectors of pathogens.
- More than 2,400 species exist worldwide
- Attracted to animals by body heat, movement, and the carbon dioxide that animals exhale
- Adults feed on blood; larvae feed on organic debris
- Found on cats and dogs year-round, but most common during warm and humid weather
- Lifespan of dogs is typically more than 100 days, enough time for a pair of fleas and their descendants to produce millions of offspring. Under ideal conditions, assuming no mortality, a pair of fleas have the potential to produce more than 20 trillion descendants in one year
- Found on opossums, rats, other rodents, and humans
- Can transmit tapeworms from dogs and rodents to other animals and humans
- Can jump up to 150 times the length of their body
- Transmit several major human diseases including plague, murine typhus, Bartonellosis, and tapeworms
Fleas’ smooth, round eggs are laid directly in the host’s fur or hair. They are not sticky, so they tend to fall down to the host’s bedding or onto nearby surfaces as soon as that host moves or shakes very much at all. That causes the eggs to accumulate wherever their hosts rest or along paths those hosts routinely travel.
Common Flea Eggs can often be found in cracks or crevices in floors or near the base of the fibers of any rug-like material. Multiple bacteria/pathogens – Allergic reactions and co-conspirator in plague transmission.