10 Odd Flea and Tick Facts You Need to Know

Being a pet parent, we give it our all by taking care of our precious pets and loving them doing all we can. Sometimes even with all our efforts, we can’t stop pests like fleas and ticks from getting onto our pets and causing them harm.

These are the most inevitable and most bothersome things for our pets to come across. But unfortunately, they do come across them sometimes. On top of that, we as pet parents face a lot of trouble saving our pets from these fleas and ticks.

We do all we can to stop these fleas and ticks, like taking our pets to the veterinarian, asking our friends who own pets for advice, or surfing the internet for solutions. We do all of this to take better care of our pets and make their lives more enjoyable.

However, how many of us have much knowledge about fleas and ticks? Or even if someone had some experience, those are the most known facts. There are uncountable weird and bizarre facts that many people are aware of.

Fleas and ticks are two types are the most common pests that bother pets; thus, we’ll discuss the top bizarre facts about them.

Fleas

Fleas, scientifically known as Siphonaptera, live as external pests of other organisms; they feed off their hosts’ blood. There are more than 2,500 species that have been discovered by scientists to date.

Fleas lay 20 eggs a day

This fact may look pretty much familiar to many people, and as they would say that many animals do that, it is nothing extraordinary. The unfortunate reality is that when a flea lays 20 eggs a day, half are female. Eventually, those ten females will lay 20,000 eggs in 60 days. Their ability to repopulate is incredible, making it hard to get rid of them.

Jumping skills

Fleas have such strong legs that they can’t be compared to humans. The average length of an adult flea is three millimeters long, and they can jump to up to 110 times their size. If we compare that ability with an average human, it will be like that person was able to leap over a 30-story building.

Unimaginable Speed

Along with incredible jumping skills, fleas have unimaginable speed. Not just they can jump high, they can also accelerate 20 times faster than space shuttles while speeding up. That’s an unbelievable speed.

History

Fleas are one of the oldest species that have been living on planet Earth. Their history goes back to 165 million years, and certain fossils have been traced back to the Mesozoic era by scientists. Their history includes the Jurassic period. As one can imagine, they were enormous at that time, especially compared to the average size of fleas of today.

Winter can’t kill them

As many of us know, fleas survive best in warm temperatures; but they can also survive in cold weather, which is very short if they cover very well in their cocoons. Some can live through the winter if they are fortunate enough to find warm spots—like your pet’s coat.

Ticks

Ticks, or Ixodidae, which are from the arachnid class, also feed on the blood of the organism they live on as external parasites, just like fleas. They can be found all around the world.

Ticks feed on the blood of humans, animals, birds, and even amphibians and reptiles. 

Ticks are said to originate back to the Cretaceous era, which was 146 to 66 million years ago. The most common form of fossilization of ticks is amber immersion. Ticks belong mostly to two prominent families, Ixodidae, or hard ticks, and Agamidae, also known as soft ticks.

Ticks are usually three to five millimeters long. Adult ticks either have oval or pear-shaped bodies. In addition to that, they have four pairs of legs, generally with a hard dorsal surface. The difference between hard ticks and soft ticks is that hard ticks have beak-like appendages in front of their mouths, and soft ticks’ mouthparts are under their body.

Ticks usually prefer living in warm or humid climates; they can locate their hosts with environmental change and smell. Ticks are among the top diseases spreading parasites and can spread diseases to both humans and animals.

This is due to their habit of ingesting an animal or human’s blood and sometimes transferring them to another human or animal. Their life cycle has four stages: egg, larva, nymph, and adult. Ticks need to have at least three different host animals to complete their life cycle.

Ticks are arachnids

Ticks belong to the arachnid class, which makes them related to spiders and scorpions.

Ticks don’t jump 

Ticks prefer to crawl to their hosts from tips of grasses, leaves, and shrubs rather than fly, fall, or jump off trees.

Saliva like cement

Many hard ticks have saliva so strong that it is basically like cement; this helps them attach themselves to their hosts, so it becomes challenging to get rid of them.

Many species

Ticks have many species, which is why they are widely spread around the world. There are more than 900 species of ticks around the globe.

Dangerous bites

Some ticks have very harmful bites, even for us humans. There is a type of tick called the Lone Star Tick; one bite from these can cause allergies to red meat in humans and other animals. You can visit petdogplanet.com for detailed information on this topic.

Dogs are most vulnerable to ticks as they can have severe allergies to their bites, which eventually leads to itching, skin abrasion, and/or hair loss. This is mainly if their diet includes red meat, beef, lamb meat, or pork.