How does flea breeding

Starting the fight against fleas in the apartment or in domestic animals, it is important to understand that fleas reproduce quickly, efficiently and at the same time are very unpretentious to environmental conditions. They are insects with complete transformation. This means that leaving the egg flea larva It is very different from an adult insect, both externally and in its way of life, way of feeding and behavioral features.

This type of insect development has certain evolutionary advantages: because the larvae and adults feed on different foods and live in different places, they do not compete with each other for food and therefore have a better chance of surviving.

On a note

A similar flea breeding pattern is also characteristic of butterflies, beetles, mosquitoes with flies, wasps and ants. Everyone knows how much a caterpillar differs from a butterfly.The differences between an adult flea and its larva are about the same great.

Cockroaches, grasshoppers, bedbugs and dragonflies demonstrate a different type of development. Their larvae, called nymphs, are quite similar to adult insects, and in many cases live with them and feed on the same food. This development has its advantages in terms of access to a large amount of food - the same cockroaches in the rainforest due to the food of all individuals with the same food can simultaneously "master" a large number of rotting organic debris.

The process of breeding fleas is almost always hidden from pet owners, and for a person without special knowledge and attempts to observe it goes completely unnoticed. However, the numerous nuances accompanying such reproduction of parasites are very curious to talk about them in more detail.

Important!

It would be wrong to say that fleas breed in cats or dogs. Reproduction of fleas in general is not tied to animal hosts or even to humans. All that parasites need from mammals is blood. After eating, they go to continue the race in a more calm and secluded places.

Thus, fleas do not live on cats, dogs and other animals: parasites only temporarily jump on them for food.

 

Some biology: from egg to adult parasite

The female flea mates very shortly after it leaves the pupa. Mating can occur both on the animal itself and in its hole, on the litter, in any secluded place where two different-sex individuals will find each other. After that, the female needs at least once to feed on the host's blood so that the eggs in her body begin to develop.

Fleas in cats and dogs breed near the places where the animals rest, near their toilet. Sometimes flea females even lay their eggs on the pet's fur, and after that the eggs fall off in different places on the floor.

It is interesting

A flea can starve without harming itself for several months. However, the female will not lay a single egg during such a hunger strike.

Eggs ripen in the body of a flea in batches - 4-5 pieces (up to 15) after each feeding. After that, a flea in any place, wherever it may be, even on the animal's fur, literally shoots the eggs out of its body so that they fly apart a sufficient distance.This is a kind of guarantee that the larvae will live far from each other and will not compete for food, as well as a guarantee that at least some of them will be able to find shelter and food in general.

Flea eggs are small in size - up to 0.5 mm in diameter, white in color, almost invisible to the naked eye even on a dark surface. They develop at least two days (at elevated temperatures), and under normal conditions - about two weeks.

It is interesting

The optimal conditions for the development of fleas that parasitize pets are about 23-25 ​​° C and humidity about 60%. With a decrease in temperature, they can survive a decrease in humidity, and, conversely, during warming, they easily tolerate excess humidity.

On the contrary, at high temperatures and dry air, eggs and larvae dry out, and in cold, humid air they die from hypothermia. At high humidity and high temperatures, fleas breed at the highest rate. At the same time, they are on average larger.

Severe conditions - frosts, drought - usually flea pupae survive. Moreover, the entire breeding cycle of fleas can stretch for several months, and sometimes up to one and a half years.

From the eggs of fleas go larvae, similar to white translucent worms.At first they are quite small - about a millimeter in length - but as they grow, they shed three times and reach 4-5 mm in the last stage. At this time, in their body, the esophagus is visible, filled with their main food — organic debris, pieces of the skin of host animals, excrements of adult fleas containing undigested blood.

After three or four weeks (minimum - 7-8 days), the larva entangles itself with a thin silk cocoon and turns into a pupa. In this form, it does not feed, does not move, breathes a little and can experience severe changes in temperature and humidity, lack of a source of food.

It is interesting

An adult flea can briefly withstand a decrease in the temperature of the air around it to minus 40 ° C. The pupa is also stable, but eggs and larvae die already at near-zero temperatures and in light frost.

At the pupal stage, the insect stays from 5 days to a year, depending on the conditions. In the tropics and apartments, adult fleas emerge from the pupae very quickly. When insects breed in the nests of birds and animals in temperate and northern latitudes, the pupae that were in the nest after the owners left it will languish in this species until the next year, when the inhabitants reappear in the shelter.

In a special scientific video it is shown in detail how fleas reproduce and how insect development proceeds at all stages. Fleas in cats and dogs breed just like that, regardless of the specific species.

 

How fleas breed - full cycle

 

How quickly do fleas breed?

In general, it can be said that fleas breed very quickly. Under certain conditions, the cycle, during which the larva hatches from the egg, sheds three times, turns into a pupa, an adult individual leaves it, mates and lays a new laying (the so-called “from egg to egg” cycle) takes 9-10 days.

Simply put, the change of generations occurs in fleas for a little more than one week. But this is a rather rare case. More often in normal residential conditions under the litter of a cat (or under the conditions of a fox or gopher burrow in nature) fleas survive such a cycle for three to four weeks.

Generally speaking, it is in the apartments or in the outbuildings, in which a comfortable temperature is maintained throughout the year, that fleas reproduce most rapidly.

 

Exotic fleas, exotic breeding

Different types of fleas are known for the specific details of their breeding.

So female sand flea, usual on the beaches of India and the islands of the Caribbean, bites into the skin of his victim and sticks to the blood vessel. In a few days of constant feeding, her little body swells to the size of a pea. But it is not a reservoir of blood. This is a large set of eggs that develop as long as the insect has a food source.

A few days later, all the eggs are thrown away by a sandy flea from the wound, and she herself either dies or leaves the victim. In humans, or an animal in a place where a flea is attached, inflammation develops, the victim experiences very severe pain. Sometimes as a result of repeated attacks in people gangrene develops.

And the flea alakurt living in the Tien Shan in the wool of sheep at the time of laying eggs swells up to 7 mm in length and becomes similar to a striped worm. Local shepherds call it the “spotted worm”. There have been cases of sheep being killed to death in severe alakurt infection.

 

Fleas, a cat and an apartment: fleas breeding in these conditions

Fleas in an apartment breed in places where they are most secure. Usually their larvae develop behind baseboards, under furniture, in trash cans, closets in which debris or dirt accumulates, in bedding in cat resting places, under parquet.

In private homes, flea larvae can develop directly under the house on the street, and fleas come to feed into the house.

Knowing these features of fleas, when exterminating them is necessary:

• carefully treat insecticidal preparations floors, carpets, stove benches for dogs and cats, parquet, plinths, shelves in closets;
• especially diligently carry out wet cleaning, and preferably not only after hounding fleas, but also every week in general - this way most of the younger generation of parasites will be removed from the apartment;
• repeating the treatment of the premises with an insecticide two weeks after the first harassment - this will destroy the fleas that grow out of the pupae that survived the first harassment.

It is also useful to examine in detail how the flea larvae look, so that if they meet by chance in or near the house, they take measures in time and protect themselves and their family from parasites.

 

Interesting shots: flea larvae that swarm in the animal bedding

 

Comparison of different types of flea products for effectiveness