March 10, 2015 • 39 mins
Fleas are the bane of the existence of pet owners. From their eggs to their lifespan to their feeding habits, fleas are practically designed to be a nuisance. They are parasites, after all. Get down on flea level with Josh and Chuck in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry and this is
stuff you should not Hey, dude, how's it going good?
How are you man? Good? Chuck? Yes, Chuck? Yes, you
(00:26):
love New York right? Sure do? I love New York too.
It's good city. It's a great city. In fact, I
think we suggested first let someone do that on a
T shirt. I love New York. Yeah. I don't recall
that he hadn't been getting your checks. No, well, I'll
make sure you get those. I don't think the person
who really created that has been getting any checks for
(00:47):
a long time. Yeah, that'd be an interesting little thing
to look up a bit. It's unknown to history who
who did it? Yeah? Who did? I heart New York
and that iconic font. I think it is known it is, Yeah,
I think it is. And I think it was probably
somebody who's contracted by, like not the Chamber of Commerce,
but some tourism board maybe for New York, like the
guy who wrote Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Yes, but
(01:10):
he got his copyright back from Montgomery Ward. Remember, it's
like the most benevolent thing any corporation has ever done.
My mind's still blown. And that was two Christmases ago
that we first learned about it. Anyway, I wonder, though,
if I Heart New York is actually in the public domain,
or if it's just been pirated so much that they
just don't even try to police it any longer. Maybe
(01:31):
because we for our Canadian tour um you may design
the Canadian leaf Canada shirts in place of the Heart. Yeah,
those are great. You can actually buy those in our store.
It's true. We never plug our store. No, we don't.
It's crazy. It's like we just pretend it doesn't exist.
It does exist. I felt like a jerk for a
second there by plugging the store. I was like, wait
a minute, I think we've ever plugged it. We're allowed
(01:53):
to do that. You can actually buy shirts. Yeah, it's
on our website. Stuff you should know dot com in
the top nav. I think it's as store. You just
click that. All all the stuff. The classic s y
s K Bowling shirt is on their classic Uh. There's
just a lot of stuff, good stuff. So anyway, New York,
New York made the news recently, as it does from
(02:15):
time and time, Chuck, and that it was discovered that
the flee that was responsible for spreading bubonic plague has
been found alive and well on the rats of New York.
Did you know that? What? Yeah? Now, the the people
UM who conducted the study, they just rounded up like
(02:36):
some rats and tested them, and they're like, Yep, this
one's got it. Yep, this one's got it. They were
quick to point out that the bubonic plague itself, which
is called um your Cinea pistalis, it's a bacteria that
causes the plague, which is nasty. Right, did we do
We didn't do a bubonic plague? Yeah, or black death
(02:58):
or something that was a good episode. I think this
is different. But the bubonic plague, it's it's caused by
a back there you're sending a pistles. And they said
that they didn't find you're sending a pistalis in the fleas.
They just found the fleas, the oriental rat flea on
the rats of New York. So they're saying, you're probably
(03:19):
not going to catch the plague. It turns out the
most people who get the plague all seven of them
every year in the US get them here in the south. Really. Yeah,
that's nice, so steer clear of the southern rats. But
the New York rats could just easily spread it to
because everything's in place for it to spread, right, So
fleece man. That's a good that's an old school intro.
(03:43):
It was okay, it's goods a little rusty. So yeah, fleas.
We've done ticks, and we've done um flies, and we've
done these termites. Was a really good remember them termites.
We have dabbled in the insect world. Yeah, and this
is a Tracy Wilson article who wrote, like all all
of the insect articles, you could tell this phone came
later and she's like, I'm so tired of talking about
(04:05):
the thorax that I'm not even going to mention it
in this one. Just go read any of the other articles. Yeah,
And there was one line in here where she was like, yeah,
and like the life cycles like most other insects, don't
be dumb. Read any of these hundred other ones I've
written about it. So please are the bane of my existence.
(04:27):
And I'll pepper throughout the podcast my experience with my
animals and fleas because I've had a couple of major
infestations in my life. But um, they are parasites, and
that means that they feed on the host, in this
case drinking your blood like a tick does. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. For some reason, I don't equate fleas with
(04:49):
ticks though, even though they're so similar. But yes, they
both drink blood. And in fact, what the what the
flea eats is called the blood meal. It's not it
is called dinner. They call it a blood meal. Yeah.
They're about two thousand species of flea. Um. We are
mainly going to concentrate on. I think they call it
(05:09):
the cat flea. That's the most common here in the States. Yeah. Um,
And the cat flee is not just attracted to the cat,
it also likes dogs, also likes humans a little bit. Um.
And then there's the dog flee, which is also attracted
to cats and dogs and humans, but it will also
attach itself to raccoons, pigs, livestock, wild animals. It's not
(05:31):
very picky. Yeah, like the flea you get and you're
on the squirrel in your yard, that squirrel that haunts
you in your yard, um is going to be different
than the one on your pet. Inside largely because that
squirrel is never laying down for hours on end during
the day. Where the flea will, you know, find a
(05:53):
nice lazy dog and be like this looks like a
great place to fornicate and lay eggs and have a
blood meal or two. Do with my whole thing with
my mouthparts. For that reason, if you ever do find
a squirrel that's stunned or possibly dead, just lying there,
don't roll on it because the fleas will jump out
onto you. Have you seen those photos, they're old, but
(06:16):
of the dead squirrels with the action figures, showed these
Discotti the other day. He had never seen the I
should tell everybody has made an inquisitive Yeah, it's super old.
But someone at one point found a dead squirrel and
got like g I. Joe action figures and as if
he had hunted it, like you know, doing a hunting
pose with his leg propped up on the squirrel's head.
(06:38):
And there's another one with the guy like holding up
the squirrel's head like it was a big game. It's
really funny. And it's funny because they didn't kill these
squirrels to do it, because that would be a different deal.
Squirrel died naturally, I'm assuming the squirrels just like, yeah,
run over in the road and someone was like, hey,
let me get my gho's out, like they were hunting
big game, because that's what you do. But should not
(07:00):
ever stage one of these killing an animal? No, And
you really probably shouldn't stage them anyway, because the people
who did stage them probably did get fleas, and they
got cat fleas or dog fleas, I'm sorry, and maybe
the plague. So chuck. Um we said that they feed
on blood, they have blood meals. They are kind of picky,
(07:21):
but not altogether picky when it comes to the kind
of hosts that they have, right, and that you said
that they're parasites, and they're specifically ectoparasites, which means they
live outside of the body, yeah, rather than endoparasites, which
live inside the body. But the thing that they have
in common is that all they do is take, take, take,
(07:44):
and they give nothing back in return but grief, which
you don't really want. So it's not a symbiotic relationship.
It's a parasitic relationship that you have with your fleas.
That's a one way street, right, Um. Fleas are the
little guys, of course, um We we'll I think you
know what we're talking about. What we will describe it.
It's wingless um. They have these hard plates called sclare
(08:08):
rites um that their body is covered with, which is
why if you've ever had a flee and just mash
them between your thumb and finger and been like take that,
and then he goes and jumps off, like how did
that happen? It's because he's that they're covered with these
small plates to help that sclare rites. Yeah, you gotta
really work to kill a flea, like with your fingernails,
(08:30):
and it not only protects fleece from fingernails, it also
protects them from falls because they will jump. They're known
to jump. Yes, we go ahead and talk about that.
I think we should. It's pretty amazing stuff, pretty neat.
What are the stats there? So a flea can jump
about seven inches vertically, that's up and down. Yeah, seven
(08:51):
to eight and thirteen inches horizontally, right, So big deal.
Seven inches. So remember in the cockroach episode where they
can move fifty body links in a second to humans
is like two fifty miles an hour. This is very
similar um in human terms, a flea's jump would be
(09:12):
a two hundred and fifty ft vertical jump from a
human that's a lot. That is crazy, and four hundred
and fifty ft horizontal jump. Yeah, so when this fleet
jump six inches, you should be very impressed. It is
impressive because the current record for a standing long jump
is twelve ft and a fleet could jump the equivalent
(09:33):
of four fifty ft. That's right, setting world records from
your dog's but on a daily basis just one of
the amazing things about a flea um and creepy. Uh.
The exoskeleton is smooth looking when you're looking at the
little fleet on your knee, but what it really has
is a bunch of little tiny hairs um sort of
(09:54):
comb back like like a cool guy would do, like
the fons, like the fonds would do. They're pointing a
away from the head and that those little backwards pointing
hairs mean that they can sail through your dog or
cat's fur without getting hooked. But if you go and
try and get the fleet out, that will serve as
a hook like velcro. Yeah, anchor it in that fur.
(10:15):
Which is why I fine tooth combs work, but other
like a brush won't because the fine tooth comb is
so close together. The times are so close together that
the fleet still just can't hang on but a brush
it's like that was nothing. Yeah, and if you have
a flea infestation or a bit of a fleet problem, uh,
your fleet comb is gonna be a good way to tell.
(10:37):
But it's not gonna get rid of that many fleas.
You know, you can flee comb and still have fleas.
It's the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, but it's
a good place. Like if you do that, or if
you separate the hair and you see that dirt flee
dirt they call it. That's like either dried blood or
poop and a good sign that your dog or cat
has fleas. Yeah, it's not flee a No flea. Eggs
(11:01):
are clear, that's right, and smooth. So um. Fleas, like
you said, suck blood. They eat what are called blood meals,
which I just can't give past um. And they do
so because they have specialized mouth parts, which is basically
a combination of two saws on the side that puncture
your skin. Those are called L A C I N
(11:25):
I A. I was gonna say, listen you great um,
and they form a saliva channel which will come into
play later on. Yeah. Um. And then They also surround
what's called the epipharynx, which is the needle that sucks
the blood. That's right, and that is a stylet altogether. Um,
(11:47):
it forms a stylet, which is the puncturing organ, and
it basically it all just jabs into your skin and
that epipharynx is working with um basically stomach pumps, yeah,
to suck that stuff out. Yeah, which is pretty impressive
because it requires a lot of suction to get that
(12:07):
blood out. So again, pretty impressive with fleas jump far
suck really hard that they do suck. Yeah. Alright, Right
after this break, we're gonna talk a little bit about
that life cycle that we mentioned earlier. All right, Josh
(12:38):
fleet life cycle. Yeah. Again, you can just look at
Tracy Wilson be like, there's like other bugs. It's like
a butterfly. It's still worth mentioning. So an adult has
some eggs, and those eggs are totally smooth. They don't
disappear smooth like the fleet itself. They are totally smooth.
And one of the reasons why they're smooth is because
the eggs are meant to fall off of the host,
like the flea itself is having a blood meal. On
(13:01):
your leg, laying some eggs, pooping, just doing all sorts
of crazy stuff, right. Um, And when it lays its eggs,
the eggs fall off and they fall into if you're
in the house, carpet fibers deep in the carpet, cracks
in your hardwood floor, man, that's the worst. Outside. They'll
fall into the soil and they are just meant to
be sequestered away. Yeah. They need in order to hatch
(13:24):
and develop, they need warm, moist environment about seventy degrees
fahrenheit sevent humidity, although they'll go as low as like
forty five anything below that, and they're just not gonna hatch. Yeah, exactly.
That's why a good winter freeze is gonna help your
fleet problem. Dry winter freeze, dry winter freeze. Um, your
eggs are gonna hatch in about twelve days. And that
(13:45):
twelve day span is one of the things that makes
flee so maddening, because you can think you've killed all
your fleas, and then there are tens of thousands of
them that are gonna hatch twelve days later, right, and
you go kill those and by the time you kill those,
they've already laid eggs. And this cycle continues, which is why,
and we'll get into it. You have to kill the
(14:07):
fleas and their eggs to to take out a flea infestation.
At the same time, it's challenging and so UM. The
egg is sitting there in your hardvard floor, your carpet,
or out in the soil, and after about twelve days,
if the conditions are right, it'll hatch and it'll turn
into a lot larva. And the larva goes through three
in stars or cycles of development, stages of development, and
(14:29):
they mold after each one, and after the third in
star it says, I'm going back to my home in
the cracks in the floor and spin me a nice
cocoon and turn into a PUPA. That's right, And like
we said, it's sort of like a butterfly. Um, an
adult flea is eventually going to emerge from that cocoon.
It's not nearly as pretty as an beautiful iridescent butterfly.
(14:50):
Doesn't have blood meals as far as I know. Um,
there's your next sci fi movie, blood meal butterfly. Look
forward after Sharkonado three from this march UM about half
in a in a population if fleas, about half of
them or eggs, which is why we said they're so
problematic to get rid of, and only about five percent
(15:11):
reach adulthood. Um. And one reason is because females can
only lay the eggs if they've had that blood meal.
If they're starving, they will die before they reproduce. Yeah.
And what's neat about them too, is when they're in
the pupil stage and they're up in their cocoon and
hanging out developing and everything, because they emerge from the
cocoon is an adult. But while they're a pupa, they
(15:34):
can tell through either vibrations and and or sensing body
heat whether there's food nearby, like should I hatch? Because
they right, because they feed on warm blooded animals, so
they can tell them. They find these signals in the
environment and if they if the signals are right, they'll
come out of their cocoon. Uh and I think a
week or something like that. If the signals aren't right,
(15:55):
they can stay in their cocoon for up to a year,
and they actually can will flash themselves. They roll around
their cocoon and like debris and hair and stuff like that,
which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's why if you have
like a vacation house and you've eradicated your fleas and
then left for the winter. I guess you'd be there
in the winter you've left for the spring, depending on
(16:18):
how you I don't know how you do your vacation house. Um,
but when you come back, you can like that could
be the signal, hey, there are a hosts here now. Like.
It doesn't mean you've been overrun by fleas that whole time.
They've just been laying in wait for you to come back.
And then you're back and there say we're here. The
(16:40):
females can lay about twenty eggs at a time, or
about five during a long life. I saw up to
two thousand and another article than the say between Yeah,
but again they won't they won't lay eggs if they
haven't eaten no. Um. One of the they're cool things
(17:00):
about the flea larva is that they actually don't eat
blood meals. They eat just about everything else hair, dead,
skin cells, um, flea droppings, nasty nasty things, um, just
about anything that they'll find in the cracks and your floorboards,
or in your carpet or out in the soil. Right. Um.
(17:21):
But then once they hatch, they go after the blood meal.
One of the other things that the flea larva eats
our tapeworm eggs, which makes fleas again super nasty and
dirty little creatures because once they eat those tapeworm eggs,
they grow up to become fleas that have tapeworms. Yeah,
(17:42):
the tapeworm actually forms in the gut of the flea.
It can be that tiny and uh, then all of
a sudden, your animal has tapeworms because they got bitten
by a flea who injected that junk into your your
dog or more likely you accidentally a to flee or
a flea got into your food or the the your
(18:07):
dog eight to flee, the tapeworm lodged itself and your
dog's gut, the tapeworm eggs were excreted through your dog's
rectum its bedding. You pet your dog, and then you
touch your mouth and the tape worms crawl into your mouth.
The tape worm makes and then now you're infected. So
(18:28):
there's like eighty different ways that a tape worm. You
can become infected with tapeworms just from fleas and specifically
dog fleas are the ones that carry tapeworms. Most likely
fleas on dogs or the dog. The dog flee um.
So that's nasty. Here's some more nastiness for you. The
reaction that you get when you get a fleet by
(18:48):
or your dog gets um. You know, when your dog
is scratching. That is from the junk and the saliva
of the flea, specifically the ct E F one protein. Yeah,
and it affects some people and animals more than others. Uh.
It was really bad on my dog Charlie, Like she
had the hair falling out in the bald spots and
(19:09):
the hot patches. She was like, these fleas are driving
me crazy. I know. It's terrible. Um. And the same
thing can happen to people. You know, if you get
a flea bite, you can see sometimes you have a
few little bumps. Yeah, some people react to it worse
than others, but everybody pretty much gets bumps. Those bumps
make it even worse because you can scratch it, and
(19:31):
some of those bumps will have bacteria flea excrement around them.
When you go to scratch them, you can break the
skin and actually move those flea excrement that's dirty is
all get out into your newly open break in the skin,
and you get all sorts of nasty infections from that. Yeah,
you can also get a murine typhus UH in the
(19:52):
southern and southwestern parts here where we live. UM that
is caused by the bacteria Rickettsia type and UH mainly
on the cat flee in the oriental rat flee. But
that's one of the things you can get when you
when the flea is defecating while they're eating, you scratch
and you get that infected waste in the scratch or
(20:14):
you know, if you've broken your skin, so you get
typhus from it from that you scratch in your skin.
And then of course we talked about the plague, which
is pretty interesting. The plague bacteria actually infects the flea
itself and it develops this film in the flea's mid gut.
So when the flea goes to eat a blood meal,
it can't digest all the way, so then it goes
(20:36):
to feast on the next person and when it punctures
your skin, it actually barfs up the undigested blood meal
that's now infected with the plague into your skin. Now
you have the plague. Man, when you hear words like
mid gut and blood meal and mouthparts like barf is
the least offensive of all those. That sounds cute. So, um,
(21:00):
we can understand why everyone wants to get rid of fleas,
but some people learn to love fleas, especially in the
nineteenth century, and we'll talk about those people and their
flee circuses right after this. All right, Josh, you mentioned
(21:29):
flee circuses. Um. I always thought that flee circuses were
just fake, and that they use magnets and other little
things to like move the bicycle and that can be
a flee circus. Those are called, I believe, illusory flee circuses. No,
they have a name humbug flee circuses. But there were,
(21:52):
and I guess still are in some places, flee circuses
that actually attached little leashes and chains to fleas and
they do things, they pull things around. Yeah, because here's
another astounding thing about fleas. They can lift up to
sixty times their body weight, so they're enormously strong. Yeah,
(22:12):
sixty times. Like think about it, man, Like imagine lifting
sixty times your body weight. You'd be crushed. It's like
that's a huge rock to you. You know, it's a boulder.
It's a boulder. So fleas can lift their equivalent of boulders.
And these boulders, especially in the nineteenth century, but starting
about in the sixteen hundreds came in the form of
(22:35):
things like chariots, coaches, hearses, just things that like say,
a horse would draw, but in miniature. Yeah, And apparently
before that, even in the late fifteen hundreds, a guy
named Mark Scalliot in eight he was a watchmaker, and
apparently watchmakers were the first dudes who had the idea
(22:55):
to attach a flea to a chain, and in fIF
did so. It was a lot consisting of eleven different
pieces of steel, iron, and brass, which together with the
key belonging to it, weighed only one grain. Whatever one
grain was, It's like a pound and a half. Let's
no no way. So this is the late yeah, and
(23:17):
he was the first guy who was like, hey, this
little flee can actually carry something, right, So that call
it on. But apparently the the paying public didn't catch
onto what was really going on, which was these guys
had figured out how to actually train fleas. One of
the thing first things you have to teach them is
to not jump, and apparently you train them not to
jump by keeping him in a sealed container. I was
(23:38):
gonna say about beating them by like holding their parents hostage. Um,
you keep them in a jar, I guess the sea
through jar, so they can see their parents on the
other side are being held hostage. But they jump and
jump and they get nowhere, and they learned jumping is futile,
so the very shallow something I guess yeah, yeah, um.
(23:58):
And then after they learned to jump, you tie them
up to this harness, this very tiny harness, and then
they live in the harness for the rest of their lives,
which no, it's about three months. But um, so let's
say flee lives a year. The first six months it
has to mature to about the age where it can
learn and it's big enough to put in the harness.
(24:21):
You spend three months training it, and then it has
a performing life of three months where it's basically just
living in this harness, carrying chariots around for people's entertainment.
There are probably people out there feeling bad about the flee, yeah,
but don't forget the plague and flee instrument. Yeah, all
that stuff. It is kind of sad to an extent um.
(24:43):
But in the six d apparently the public thought that uh,
the fleas the flee circus trainers were sorcerers. That was
a big thing because that explains it actually just as well. Well,
they really caught on in places like october Fest in Germany.
They loved it. They still do. I saw a video
of a dude in Germany like today showing his flee
(25:06):
circus off. It seems like very German thing to do,
you know, be trying to fleece, to pull the things.
Uh Andy Kaufman, sure, Um County Island and the Long
Beach in California and New York City, Um, places like Blackpool, England.
Wherever there were circuses and freak shows and stuff like that,
you you might find a flee circus going on. Yeah,
(25:28):
and there's a dude named Andy Clark who's got one
going now. He's he's got his hands on nineteenth century
manual's magazine articles reviews of the real flee circuses, and
he's um recreating on my guess. But we'd be remiss
to not mention Albert totally. Isn't that his name? Who? El?
Albert Tolato? Who was he? He was like the flee
(25:51):
circus guy, just the legend in the field. He was
the chief flee circus dude. He go over in his house,
he's got like fleas doing the dishes and pretty much
he's cleaning up after him. Uh so chuck flee circus
kind of hard to do. Most people just want to
get rid of fleace, so there's some waste. Yeah, And
(26:13):
like I mentioned, I've had two major infestations, one in
Los Angeles where UM I could not find. Here's my advice,
this is off script. If you want to get rid
of your fleas, try and find the source area, find
the head fleet. Find the head fleet and take a meeting. UM,
work out a negotiation between the two of you, and
(26:34):
it should work out. No chariots. So find find your
source and and l A. I could not find my source.
That was driving me crazy. And finally I was going
I was outside. I thought, let me go in the
yard and we had this uh sort of squirrel. Now
it was a garage on the side of the house
the dead squirrel and filled the dead squirrels and that
(26:55):
was it. Um. And on the other side of the garage,
it was like two ft of space about fifteen ft
long between that and the fence. And that's just the
place where nothing ever went, you know, and except the dogs. Yeah,
except the dogs. And I was walking over there, and
what I do is I walk around the yard barefoot
if I'm looking outside, because yeah, that's the thing. Yeah,
you look down and see if they jump on you.
(27:15):
And I walked around the corner to this thing, dude,
and in five seconds I had probably a thousand fleas
just crawling all over me. Was it sandy over there
at all? It's kind of dirty and it was dank
and dark? Yeah, yeah, just not like like I said,
it was not well traveled. And dude, I was like,
(27:38):
all right, this is it. And I did the thing
I don't normally do, which has get a lot of
chemicals and sprayed all over it. Did you set it
on fire? Set it on fire and it up and
pooped on it? And that did it. Here's some of
my excrement fleas. And then I had a situation here
in Atlanta where I actually got it, had a guy
come out and spray um nematodes um instead of chemicals.
(28:00):
You can apparently spray your basement and house and floorboards
with nematodes. Those are flatworms, right, yeah, they're living things
apparently that I guess. I would guess you have no idea,
but that that worked. UM and I also use what
your overrun with nematodes. Now they were great. They left
sprinkle a little on your coffee. So there's some those
(28:22):
chemicals you mentioned, there's some pretty cool UM chemicals. Yeah,
there's some topical treatments that you can use on your animals,
which they say they're safe. I try to avoid them
just because I don't know. I just don't think that
chemicals that seep into the skin of your animal is
ever good. No, I mean it's a great you make
a good point, you know, Yeah, which I been forced
to use them, which I hate. But if you could
(28:43):
control the fleas in the environment, you could conceivably not
have to use the chemicals on that. That's what the
nematode guy said. He's like, I don't ever use that stuff.
He said, you stop it before it starts. And it's like, well,
good for you. You own you've got tons of nematodes
in that can. You've got a fancy pants dog. But
when it comes to those topical things UM and I,
g r s and set growth regulators, my favorite is
(29:06):
the kitan synthesis inhibitor. Those that's mean it basically creates
mutant fleet soft fleas that never grow their exo skeleton right,
which means they never developed fully, which means their toasts. Yeah,
which means they can be killed by dog scratches and
bites and things. Uh. Those I g rs keep that
(29:26):
I mentioned keep fleas from hatching, uh because they mimic
flee hormones. Uh. And some of these things will kill
just the eggs, some kill adult fleas, some kill both.
You pretty much want something that kills it all. Yeah,
you want to get the worst thing you can get
for the flea. So if you do have an infestation,
Tracy Wilson recommends some steps to take all at the
(29:49):
same time. You don't want to do one or the other. Um,
you want to treat your pets and the dank area
between your garage and the fence at the same time.
You want to wash all of your pets clothing, all
of their their betting being all that stuff. You want
to wash it like five million times in the hottest water.
(30:12):
You can probably with bleach if you can if you
can find it, which it's not that hard to go
to the store. Um, you want to bathe your pet.
You want to use a fleet home yeah. Uh, you
want to get a vacuum a lot, a lot, like
every day. Really, she says, at least every other day.
Is that what you said, Well, I mean every day
(30:32):
if you really want to Yeah, I would recommend twice
a day. Yeah, and not don't just vacuum and then
put it in the closet. If it's a canister or bag,
you want to empty that immediately outside. It's nice, you know. Yeah.
And you want to chase squirrels away. Yeah. And there's
a lot of stupid home remedies that say they work
that don't. Um brewers, yeast, garlic, vitamin supplements, ultrasonic collars,
(30:57):
flea collars, No, that stuff really works, trust me. Chance.
I got this one more thing on sand fleas. Did
you read this and talk about sand fleas um are
found in tropical areas another in Florida, but mentioned the Caribbean, Well,
the South American South Africa. I think that they were
native to the Caribbean, I'm sorry, sub Saharan Africa, and
(31:20):
they were taken got to Africa by the in the
slave trade. Actually, so that's how they spread, yeah, which
is just yeah. So if you've ever heard of chicos
or chiggers or jiggers, or niguas or peak quas or beachops.
These are all names for the sand flea. Uh. And
(31:43):
this lady was studying them, and she said, she's a
PhD student named Marlene. Uh named Marlene, and she was
studying ways to prevent um tangy assis infection in Madagascar,
which is spread by fleas, the sand fleas. And she said,
(32:03):
how are these things reproducing? And she said, look, I've
got a flea and they host in the body. These
are different kinds of fleas actually root and into your
under your skin and live there forever. Yeah, So it's disgusting. Well,
it's not just to extract them, right, it's not just
disgusting too. Once they move in and live there, and
(32:25):
they'll actually they'll they'll move in as groups often um
they spend the rest of their life there. Over time,
walking becomes painful, Eventually walking becomes impossible, and all of
a sudden, there goes your livelihood. So apparently the this
article mentions that affects the poors to the poor. So,
especially in Sub Saharan Africa, it's a real problem among
(32:47):
um the poverty stricken areas because you get a sand
flea in your foot, and that's it your toast. A
year later, pretty much so, she noticed that she had
one between her toes, and she said, you know what,
let me just let it burrow and see what happens.
And she did, and it lived a lot longer than usual,
(33:07):
uh two months, and she said it was still regularly
expelling liquid from its abdomen, but she never got any eggs.
And the reason uh this happened, she learned, and they
now have a new theory cooking is because she put
a sock and a shoe over it and didn't let
any other fleas in there. So basically this flee never
had sex and so never laid eggs. And what they
(33:30):
theorize now is that these female fleas can basically lay
there in a waiting state for longer than they should
ever be able to live, waiting for a male flee
to come around and fertilize the mature eggs. Science. Science,
So now they think basically that this is the deal,
and they don't know quite how that's going to help
them with fighting it, but they do know that it
(33:51):
takes two to tango, for sure, in your foot, in
your foot having sex under your skin. And speaking of
sex and fleas, we have to mention the Autobiography of
a Flea, which was an anonymous erotica book written in
the nineteenth century, like I think the eighteen eighties is
(34:12):
huge in London. Um, and it is about a flee
that that tells the tale of a girl it's attached
to who becomes the sex toy of a bunch of priests.
What autobiography of a flee? Uh? And uh, I guess
that's it. You've got anything that can top the Autobiography
of a Flee definitely not. Fan fiction is the ultimate.
(34:34):
So uh. If you want to learn more about fleas,
you can type the word fleas into the search bar
at how stuff works dot com. Since I said search parts,
time for listener medal. Uh spoiler alert on this people.
That says to do with movies that you may have
seen to stop the podcast now. That is so nice
if you don't want to be spoiled about Birdman in particular,
(34:56):
which we've already talked about. Okay, guys, for the last years,
I've cringed and groaned every time you make an error
or sweeping statement about films. Chuck, you discussed gailmo Guillermo
del Paro as the director of The Orphanage, and he
had nothing to do with the making out that film.
I'm misspoke. It's The Devil's Backbone, which was about an orphanage.
(35:17):
Didn't he wasn't also directed by a Latin America No,
but I was thinking of the Devil's Backbone, So he's right, Chuck.
You also stated once that James Cameron has not made
any good film since The Terminator, to ignoring the fantastic
blend of comedy in action that his true lies. Oh yeah,
that was pretty good. I didn't like it. That's why
I didn't mention it. Um. But when it comes to
(35:38):
some movies that change milk filmmaking at strong suspicion, that
would be my first listener mail. So Josh's criticisms a Birdman.
He he suggested first that the scene where Riggan confronts
the critic represents the director's pulpitting to the critics. Um,
he says, the critics who have attacked him, And he
says that can't be right because the guys in universal
(36:00):
praise for his movies. I'm sure he's been criticized potentially
unfairly in the past that's what I think. Uh. And
the ending of Birdman, Josh, it is heavily implied, and
we had a bunch of people say to this, actually, Uh,
it is heavily implied earlier in the film that the
type of psychosis he suffers from his daughter also shares
the moment when he returns to the room to find
(36:22):
she returns to find that her father has gone out
the window. We hear sirens indicating that he has in
fact jumped to his death in reality, but she looks
out the window and up to the sky, seeing a
hallucinatory image. Um, he will now live on for her
as Birdman and no longer her never their father. Her
reaction is also strongly indicative of this, as her face
(36:44):
does not reflect that of a sane person seeing a
human flying through the air, but instead of blissful ignorance.
So I've heard that theory that she's she's you know,
he did jump to her death and she's just like
suffers a psychotic breakdown, or that he actually did kill
himself on stage, and all of that last stuff is
not reality. Whose reality is it? I don't know who cares? Uh.
(37:07):
He also takes us to task on eight and a
half being the birth of surreal cinema because that goes
to own Chin and delou F, and that Citizen Kane
was a genesis of dark lighting. Not so, because fil
noir goes all the way back to the Cabinet of
Dr Calla, Gharry and m this guy's fun to watch
movies with and dude, this is the tame version he was.
(37:28):
Actually it was funny because he was kind of rude,
but then he was like, I love you guys, so
I think he want to wear your skin. I think
he was just being cheeky. Uh and also too, by
the way, dialing for murder, that was anatomy of a
murder that you were thinking of? From Auto premature I
looked for maybe not, but there was a movie called
(37:50):
Anatomy of a Murder by dial M. Right, yeah, right,
that's what you said, and I said, I don't know,
and then you kept talking and I looked it up
and apparently some people didn't hear me correct and say, yes,
you were right about Hitchcock. I guess it was anatomy
of a murder I was thinking of. Or there was
(38:11):
one that was just called M that was also well
m one and it was the first talkie to use
m R as a wilder release, wide wide release, and
that was premature, nor this correct. Uh, he said, this
email has already exceeded the link that moderate sanity would allow,
(38:32):
and it was even longer. And disagree, sir, You're clearly
crazy from the first sentence. I'm just kidding. That is
Travis Dukelo and he's a good guy. He just he's
a film buff and took it's the task. Thanks a
lot of Travis. It wasn't too bad. We've survived worse,
that's right. Uh. If you want to correct us or
(38:55):
throw in your two cents or whatever, because film appreciation,
I don't care what you say is subjective. True. Uh.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
(39:15):
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry and this is
stuff you should not Hey, dude, how's it going good?
How are you man? Good? Chuck? Yes, Chuck? Yes, you
(00:26):
love New York right? Sure do? I love New York too.
It's good city. It's a great city. In fact, I
think we suggested first let someone do that on a
T shirt. I love New York. Yeah. I don't recall
that he hadn't been getting your checks. No, well, I'll
make sure you get those. I don't think the person
who really created that has been getting any checks for
(00:47):
a long time. Yeah, that'd be an interesting little thing
to look up a bit. It's unknown to history who
who did it? Yeah? Who did? I heart New York
and that iconic font. I think it is known it is, Yeah,
I think it is. And I think it was probably
somebody who's contracted by, like not the Chamber of Commerce,
but some tourism board maybe for New York, like the
guy who wrote Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Yes, but
(01:10):
he got his copyright back from Montgomery Ward. Remember, it's
like the most benevolent thing any corporation has ever done.
My mind's still blown. And that was two Christmases ago
that we first learned about it. Anyway, I wonder, though,
if I Heart New York is actually in the public domain,
or if it's just been pirated so much that they
just don't even try to police it any longer. Maybe
(01:31):
because we for our Canadian tour um you may design
the Canadian leaf Canada shirts in place of the Heart. Yeah,
those are great. You can actually buy those in our store.
It's true. We never plug our store. No, we don't.
It's crazy. It's like we just pretend it doesn't exist.
It does exist. I felt like a jerk for a
second there by plugging the store. I was like, wait
a minute, I think we've ever plugged it. We're allowed
(01:53):
to do that. You can actually buy shirts. Yeah, it's
on our website. Stuff you should know dot com in
the top nav. I think it's as store. You just
click that. All all the stuff. The classic s y
s K Bowling shirt is on their classic Uh. There's
just a lot of stuff, good stuff. So anyway, New York,
New York made the news recently, as it does from
(02:15):
time and time, Chuck, and that it was discovered that
the flee that was responsible for spreading bubonic plague has
been found alive and well on the rats of New York.
Did you know that? What? Yeah? Now, the the people
UM who conducted the study, they just rounded up like
(02:36):
some rats and tested them, and they're like, Yep, this
one's got it. Yep, this one's got it. They were
quick to point out that the bubonic plague itself, which
is called um your Cinea pistalis, it's a bacteria that
causes the plague, which is nasty. Right, did we do
We didn't do a bubonic plague? Yeah, or black death
(02:58):
or something that was a good episode. I think this
is different. But the bubonic plague, it's it's caused by
a back there you're sending a pistles. And they said
that they didn't find you're sending a pistalis in the fleas.
They just found the fleas, the oriental rat flea on
the rats of New York. So they're saying, you're probably
(03:19):
not going to catch the plague. It turns out the
most people who get the plague all seven of them
every year in the US get them here in the south. Really. Yeah,
that's nice, so steer clear of the southern rats. But
the New York rats could just easily spread it to
because everything's in place for it to spread, right, So
fleece man. That's a good that's an old school intro.
(03:43):
It was okay, it's goods a little rusty. So yeah, fleas.
We've done ticks, and we've done um flies, and we've
done these termites. Was a really good remember them termites.
We have dabbled in the insect world. Yeah, and this
is a Tracy Wilson article who wrote, like all all
of the insect articles, you could tell this phone came
later and she's like, I'm so tired of talking about
(04:05):
the thorax that I'm not even going to mention it
in this one. Just go read any of the other articles. Yeah,
And there was one line in here where she was like, yeah,
and like the life cycles like most other insects, don't
be dumb. Read any of these hundred other ones I've
written about it. So please are the bane of my existence.
(04:27):
And I'll pepper throughout the podcast my experience with my
animals and fleas because I've had a couple of major
infestations in my life. But um, they are parasites, and
that means that they feed on the host, in this
case drinking your blood like a tick does. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. For some reason, I don't equate fleas with
(04:49):
ticks though, even though they're so similar. But yes, they
both drink blood. And in fact, what the what the
flea eats is called the blood meal. It's not it
is called dinner. They call it a blood meal. Yeah.
They're about two thousand species of flea. Um. We are
mainly going to concentrate on. I think they call it
(05:09):
the cat flea. That's the most common here in the States. Yeah. Um,
And the cat flee is not just attracted to the cat,
it also likes dogs, also likes humans a little bit. Um.
And then there's the dog flee, which is also attracted
to cats and dogs and humans, but it will also
attach itself to raccoons, pigs, livestock, wild animals. It's not
(05:31):
very picky. Yeah, like the flea you get and you're
on the squirrel in your yard, that squirrel that haunts
you in your yard, um is going to be different
than the one on your pet. Inside largely because that
squirrel is never laying down for hours on end during
the day. Where the flea will, you know, find a
(05:53):
nice lazy dog and be like this looks like a
great place to fornicate and lay eggs and have a
blood meal or two. Do with my whole thing with
my mouthparts. For that reason, if you ever do find
a squirrel that's stunned or possibly dead, just lying there,
don't roll on it because the fleas will jump out
onto you. Have you seen those photos, they're old, but
(06:16):
of the dead squirrels with the action figures, showed these
Discotti the other day. He had never seen the I
should tell everybody has made an inquisitive Yeah, it's super old.
But someone at one point found a dead squirrel and
got like g I. Joe action figures and as if
he had hunted it, like you know, doing a hunting
pose with his leg propped up on the squirrel's head.
(06:38):
And there's another one with the guy like holding up
the squirrel's head like it was a big game. It's
really funny. And it's funny because they didn't kill these
squirrels to do it, because that would be a different deal.
Squirrel died naturally, I'm assuming the squirrels just like, yeah,
run over in the road and someone was like, hey,
let me get my gho's out, like they were hunting
big game, because that's what you do. But should not
(07:00):
ever stage one of these killing an animal? No, And
you really probably shouldn't stage them anyway, because the people
who did stage them probably did get fleas, and they
got cat fleas or dog fleas, I'm sorry, and maybe
the plague. So chuck. Um we said that they feed
on blood, they have blood meals. They are kind of picky,
(07:21):
but not altogether picky when it comes to the kind
of hosts that they have, right, and that you said
that they're parasites, and they're specifically ectoparasites, which means they
live outside of the body, yeah, rather than endoparasites, which
live inside the body. But the thing that they have
in common is that all they do is take, take, take,
(07:44):
and they give nothing back in return but grief, which
you don't really want. So it's not a symbiotic relationship.
It's a parasitic relationship that you have with your fleas.
That's a one way street, right, Um. Fleas are the
little guys, of course, um We we'll I think you
know what we're talking about. What we will describe it.
It's wingless um. They have these hard plates called sclare
(08:08):
rites um that their body is covered with, which is
why if you've ever had a flee and just mash
them between your thumb and finger and been like take that,
and then he goes and jumps off, like how did
that happen? It's because he's that they're covered with these
small plates to help that sclare rites. Yeah, you gotta
really work to kill a flea, like with your fingernails,
(08:30):
and it not only protects fleece from fingernails, it also
protects them from falls because they will jump. They're known
to jump. Yes, we go ahead and talk about that.
I think we should. It's pretty amazing stuff, pretty neat.
What are the stats there? So a flea can jump
about seven inches vertically, that's up and down. Yeah, seven
(08:51):
to eight and thirteen inches horizontally, right, So big deal.
Seven inches. So remember in the cockroach episode where they
can move fifty body links in a second to humans
is like two fifty miles an hour. This is very
similar um in human terms, a flea's jump would be
(09:12):
a two hundred and fifty ft vertical jump from a
human that's a lot. That is crazy, and four hundred
and fifty ft horizontal jump. Yeah, so when this fleet
jump six inches, you should be very impressed. It is
impressive because the current record for a standing long jump
is twelve ft and a fleet could jump the equivalent
(09:33):
of four fifty ft. That's right, setting world records from
your dog's but on a daily basis just one of
the amazing things about a flea um and creepy. Uh.
The exoskeleton is smooth looking when you're looking at the
little fleet on your knee, but what it really has
is a bunch of little tiny hairs um sort of
(09:54):
comb back like like a cool guy would do, like
the fons, like the fonds would do. They're pointing a
away from the head and that those little backwards pointing
hairs mean that they can sail through your dog or
cat's fur without getting hooked. But if you go and
try and get the fleet out, that will serve as
a hook like velcro. Yeah, anchor it in that fur.
(10:15):
Which is why I fine tooth combs work, but other
like a brush won't because the fine tooth comb is
so close together. The times are so close together that
the fleet still just can't hang on but a brush
it's like that was nothing. Yeah, and if you have
a flea infestation or a bit of a fleet problem, uh,
your fleet comb is gonna be a good way to tell.
(10:37):
But it's not gonna get rid of that many fleas.
You know, you can flee comb and still have fleas.
It's the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, but it's
a good place. Like if you do that, or if
you separate the hair and you see that dirt flee
dirt they call it. That's like either dried blood or
poop and a good sign that your dog or cat
has fleas. Yeah, it's not flee a No flea. Eggs
(11:01):
are clear, that's right, and smooth. So um. Fleas, like
you said, suck blood. They eat what are called blood meals,
which I just can't give past um. And they do
so because they have specialized mouth parts, which is basically
a combination of two saws on the side that puncture
your skin. Those are called L A C I N
(11:25):
I A. I was gonna say, listen you great um,
and they form a saliva channel which will come into
play later on. Yeah. Um. And then They also surround
what's called the epipharynx, which is the needle that sucks
the blood. That's right, and that is a stylet altogether. Um,
(11:47):
it forms a stylet, which is the puncturing organ, and
it basically it all just jabs into your skin and
that epipharynx is working with um basically stomach pumps, yeah,
to suck that stuff out. Yeah, which is pretty impressive
because it requires a lot of suction to get that
(12:07):
blood out. So again, pretty impressive with fleas jump far
suck really hard that they do suck. Yeah. Alright, Right
after this break, we're gonna talk a little bit about
that life cycle that we mentioned earlier. All right, Josh
(12:38):
fleet life cycle. Yeah. Again, you can just look at
Tracy Wilson be like, there's like other bugs. It's like
a butterfly. It's still worth mentioning. So an adult has
some eggs, and those eggs are totally smooth. They don't
disappear smooth like the fleet itself. They are totally smooth.
And one of the reasons why they're smooth is because
the eggs are meant to fall off of the host,
like the flea itself is having a blood meal. On
(13:01):
your leg, laying some eggs, pooping, just doing all sorts
of crazy stuff, right. Um, And when it lays its eggs,
the eggs fall off and they fall into if you're
in the house, carpet fibers deep in the carpet, cracks
in your hardwood floor, man, that's the worst. Outside. They'll
fall into the soil and they are just meant to
be sequestered away. Yeah. They need in order to hatch
(13:24):
and develop, they need warm, moist environment about seventy degrees
fahrenheit sevent humidity, although they'll go as low as like
forty five anything below that, and they're just not gonna hatch. Yeah, exactly.
That's why a good winter freeze is gonna help your
fleet problem. Dry winter freeze, dry winter freeze. Um, your
eggs are gonna hatch in about twelve days. And that
(13:45):
twelve day span is one of the things that makes
flee so maddening, because you can think you've killed all
your fleas, and then there are tens of thousands of
them that are gonna hatch twelve days later, right, and
you go kill those and by the time you kill those,
they've already laid eggs. And this cycle continues, which is why,
and we'll get into it. You have to kill the
(14:07):
fleas and their eggs to to take out a flea infestation.
At the same time, it's challenging and so UM. The
egg is sitting there in your hardvard floor, your carpet,
or out in the soil, and after about twelve days,
if the conditions are right, it'll hatch and it'll turn
into a lot larva. And the larva goes through three
in stars or cycles of development, stages of development, and
(14:29):
they mold after each one, and after the third in
star it says, I'm going back to my home in
the cracks in the floor and spin me a nice
cocoon and turn into a PUPA. That's right, And like
we said, it's sort of like a butterfly. Um, an
adult flea is eventually going to emerge from that cocoon.
It's not nearly as pretty as an beautiful iridescent butterfly.
(14:50):
Doesn't have blood meals as far as I know. Um,
there's your next sci fi movie, blood meal butterfly. Look
forward after Sharkonado three from this march UM about half
in a in a population if fleas, about half of
them or eggs, which is why we said they're so
problematic to get rid of, and only about five percent
(15:11):
reach adulthood. Um. And one reason is because females can
only lay the eggs if they've had that blood meal.
If they're starving, they will die before they reproduce. Yeah.
And what's neat about them too, is when they're in
the pupil stage and they're up in their cocoon and
hanging out developing and everything, because they emerge from the
cocoon is an adult. But while they're a pupa, they
(15:34):
can tell through either vibrations and and or sensing body
heat whether there's food nearby, like should I hatch? Because
they right, because they feed on warm blooded animals, so
they can tell them. They find these signals in the
environment and if they if the signals are right, they'll
come out of their cocoon. Uh and I think a
week or something like that. If the signals aren't right,
(15:55):
they can stay in their cocoon for up to a year,
and they actually can will flash themselves. They roll around
their cocoon and like debris and hair and stuff like that,
which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's why if you have
like a vacation house and you've eradicated your fleas and
then left for the winter. I guess you'd be there
in the winter you've left for the spring, depending on
(16:18):
how you I don't know how you do your vacation house. Um,
but when you come back, you can like that could
be the signal, hey, there are a hosts here now. Like.
It doesn't mean you've been overrun by fleas that whole time.
They've just been laying in wait for you to come back.
And then you're back and there say we're here. The
(16:40):
females can lay about twenty eggs at a time, or
about five during a long life. I saw up to
two thousand and another article than the say between Yeah,
but again they won't they won't lay eggs if they
haven't eaten no. Um. One of the they're cool things
(17:00):
about the flea larva is that they actually don't eat
blood meals. They eat just about everything else hair, dead,
skin cells, um, flea droppings, nasty nasty things, um, just
about anything that they'll find in the cracks and your floorboards,
or in your carpet or out in the soil. Right. Um.
(17:21):
But then once they hatch, they go after the blood meal.
One of the other things that the flea larva eats
our tapeworm eggs, which makes fleas again super nasty and
dirty little creatures because once they eat those tapeworm eggs,
they grow up to become fleas that have tapeworms. Yeah,
(17:42):
the tapeworm actually forms in the gut of the flea.
It can be that tiny and uh, then all of
a sudden, your animal has tapeworms because they got bitten
by a flea who injected that junk into your your
dog or more likely you accidentally a to flee or
a flea got into your food or the the your
(18:07):
dog eight to flee, the tapeworm lodged itself and your
dog's gut, the tapeworm eggs were excreted through your dog's
rectum its bedding. You pet your dog, and then you
touch your mouth and the tape worms crawl into your mouth.
The tape worm makes and then now you're infected. So
(18:28):
there's like eighty different ways that a tape worm. You
can become infected with tapeworms just from fleas and specifically
dog fleas are the ones that carry tapeworms. Most likely
fleas on dogs or the dog. The dog flee um.
So that's nasty. Here's some more nastiness for you. The
reaction that you get when you get a fleet by
(18:48):
or your dog gets um. You know, when your dog
is scratching. That is from the junk and the saliva
of the flea, specifically the ct E F one protein. Yeah,
and it affects some people and animals more than others. Uh.
It was really bad on my dog Charlie, Like she
had the hair falling out in the bald spots and
(19:09):
the hot patches. She was like, these fleas are driving
me crazy. I know. It's terrible. Um. And the same
thing can happen to people. You know, if you get
a flea bite, you can see sometimes you have a
few little bumps. Yeah, some people react to it worse
than others, but everybody pretty much gets bumps. Those bumps
make it even worse because you can scratch it, and
(19:31):
some of those bumps will have bacteria flea excrement around them.
When you go to scratch them, you can break the
skin and actually move those flea excrement that's dirty is
all get out into your newly open break in the skin,
and you get all sorts of nasty infections from that. Yeah,
you can also get a murine typhus UH in the
(19:52):
southern and southwestern parts here where we live. UM that
is caused by the bacteria Rickettsia type and UH mainly
on the cat flee in the oriental rat flee. But
that's one of the things you can get when you
when the flea is defecating while they're eating, you scratch
and you get that infected waste in the scratch or
(20:14):
you know, if you've broken your skin, so you get
typhus from it from that you scratch in your skin.
And then of course we talked about the plague, which
is pretty interesting. The plague bacteria actually infects the flea
itself and it develops this film in the flea's mid gut.
So when the flea goes to eat a blood meal,
it can't digest all the way, so then it goes
(20:36):
to feast on the next person and when it punctures
your skin, it actually barfs up the undigested blood meal
that's now infected with the plague into your skin. Now
you have the plague. Man, when you hear words like
mid gut and blood meal and mouthparts like barf is
the least offensive of all those. That sounds cute. So, um,
(21:00):
we can understand why everyone wants to get rid of fleas,
but some people learn to love fleas, especially in the
nineteenth century, and we'll talk about those people and their
flee circuses right after this. All right, Josh, you mentioned
(21:29):
flee circuses. Um. I always thought that flee circuses were
just fake, and that they use magnets and other little
things to like move the bicycle and that can be
a flee circus. Those are called, I believe, illusory flee circuses. No,
they have a name humbug flee circuses. But there were,
(21:52):
and I guess still are in some places, flee circuses
that actually attached little leashes and chains to fleas and
they do things, they pull things around. Yeah, because here's
another astounding thing about fleas. They can lift up to
sixty times their body weight, so they're enormously strong. Yeah,
(22:12):
sixty times. Like think about it, man, Like imagine lifting
sixty times your body weight. You'd be crushed. It's like
that's a huge rock to you. You know, it's a boulder.
It's a boulder. So fleas can lift their equivalent of boulders.
And these boulders, especially in the nineteenth century, but starting
about in the sixteen hundreds came in the form of
(22:35):
things like chariots, coaches, hearses, just things that like say,
a horse would draw, but in miniature. Yeah, And apparently
before that, even in the late fifteen hundreds, a guy
named Mark Scalliot in eight he was a watchmaker, and
apparently watchmakers were the first dudes who had the idea
(22:55):
to attach a flea to a chain, and in fIF
did so. It was a lot consisting of eleven different
pieces of steel, iron, and brass, which together with the
key belonging to it, weighed only one grain. Whatever one
grain was, It's like a pound and a half. Let's
no no way. So this is the late yeah, and
(23:17):
he was the first guy who was like, hey, this
little flee can actually carry something, right, So that call
it on. But apparently the the paying public didn't catch
onto what was really going on, which was these guys
had figured out how to actually train fleas. One of
the thing first things you have to teach them is
to not jump, and apparently you train them not to
jump by keeping him in a sealed container. I was
(23:38):
gonna say about beating them by like holding their parents hostage. Um,
you keep them in a jar, I guess the sea
through jar, so they can see their parents on the
other side are being held hostage. But they jump and
jump and they get nowhere, and they learned jumping is futile,
so the very shallow something I guess yeah, yeah, um.
(23:58):
And then after they learned to jump, you tie them
up to this harness, this very tiny harness, and then
they live in the harness for the rest of their lives,
which no, it's about three months. But um, so let's
say flee lives a year. The first six months it
has to mature to about the age where it can
learn and it's big enough to put in the harness.
(24:21):
You spend three months training it, and then it has
a performing life of three months where it's basically just
living in this harness, carrying chariots around for people's entertainment.
There are probably people out there feeling bad about the flee, yeah,
but don't forget the plague and flee instrument. Yeah, all
that stuff. It is kind of sad to an extent um.
(24:43):
But in the six d apparently the public thought that uh,
the fleas the flee circus trainers were sorcerers. That was
a big thing because that explains it actually just as well. Well,
they really caught on in places like october Fest in Germany.
They loved it. They still do. I saw a video
of a dude in Germany like today showing his flee
(25:06):
circus off. It seems like very German thing to do,
you know, be trying to fleece, to pull the things.
Uh Andy Kaufman, sure, Um County Island and the Long
Beach in California and New York City, Um, places like Blackpool, England.
Wherever there were circuses and freak shows and stuff like that,
you you might find a flee circus going on. Yeah,
(25:28):
and there's a dude named Andy Clark who's got one
going now. He's he's got his hands on nineteenth century
manual's magazine articles reviews of the real flee circuses, and
he's um recreating on my guess. But we'd be remiss
to not mention Albert totally. Isn't that his name? Who? El?
Albert Tolato? Who was he? He was like the flee
(25:51):
circus guy, just the legend in the field. He was
the chief flee circus dude. He go over in his house,
he's got like fleas doing the dishes and pretty much
he's cleaning up after him. Uh so chuck flee circus
kind of hard to do. Most people just want to
get rid of fleace, so there's some waste. Yeah, And
(26:13):
like I mentioned, I've had two major infestations, one in
Los Angeles where UM I could not find. Here's my advice,
this is off script. If you want to get rid
of your fleas, try and find the source area, find
the head fleet. Find the head fleet and take a meeting. UM,
work out a negotiation between the two of you, and
(26:34):
it should work out. No chariots. So find find your
source and and l A. I could not find my source.
That was driving me crazy. And finally I was going
I was outside. I thought, let me go in the
yard and we had this uh sort of squirrel. Now
it was a garage on the side of the house
the dead squirrel and filled the dead squirrels and that
(26:55):
was it. Um. And on the other side of the garage,
it was like two ft of space about fifteen ft
long between that and the fence. And that's just the
place where nothing ever went, you know, and except the dogs. Yeah,
except the dogs. And I was walking over there, and
what I do is I walk around the yard barefoot
if I'm looking outside, because yeah, that's the thing. Yeah,
you look down and see if they jump on you.
(27:15):
And I walked around the corner to this thing, dude,
and in five seconds I had probably a thousand fleas
just crawling all over me. Was it sandy over there
at all? It's kind of dirty and it was dank
and dark? Yeah, yeah, just not like like I said,
it was not well traveled. And dude, I was like,
(27:38):
all right, this is it. And I did the thing
I don't normally do, which has get a lot of
chemicals and sprayed all over it. Did you set it
on fire? Set it on fire and it up and
pooped on it? And that did it. Here's some of
my excrement fleas. And then I had a situation here
in Atlanta where I actually got it, had a guy
come out and spray um nematodes um instead of chemicals.
(28:00):
You can apparently spray your basement and house and floorboards
with nematodes. Those are flatworms, right, yeah, they're living things
apparently that I guess. I would guess you have no idea,
but that that worked. UM and I also use what
your overrun with nematodes. Now they were great. They left
sprinkle a little on your coffee. So there's some those
(28:22):
chemicals you mentioned, there's some pretty cool UM chemicals. Yeah,
there's some topical treatments that you can use on your animals,
which they say they're safe. I try to avoid them
just because I don't know. I just don't think that
chemicals that seep into the skin of your animal is
ever good. No, I mean it's a great you make
a good point, you know, Yeah, which I been forced
to use them, which I hate. But if you could
(28:43):
control the fleas in the environment, you could conceivably not
have to use the chemicals on that. That's what the
nematode guy said. He's like, I don't ever use that stuff.
He said, you stop it before it starts. And it's like, well,
good for you. You own you've got tons of nematodes
in that can. You've got a fancy pants dog. But
when it comes to those topical things UM and I,
g r s and set growth regulators, my favorite is
(29:06):
the kitan synthesis inhibitor. Those that's mean it basically creates
mutant fleet soft fleas that never grow their exo skeleton right,
which means they never developed fully, which means their toasts. Yeah,
which means they can be killed by dog scratches and
bites and things. Uh. Those I g rs keep that
(29:26):
I mentioned keep fleas from hatching, uh because they mimic
flee hormones. Uh. And some of these things will kill
just the eggs, some kill adult fleas, some kill both.
You pretty much want something that kills it all. Yeah,
you want to get the worst thing you can get
for the flea. So if you do have an infestation,
Tracy Wilson recommends some steps to take all at the
(29:49):
same time. You don't want to do one or the other. Um,
you want to treat your pets and the dank area
between your garage and the fence at the same time.
You want to wash all of your pets clothing, all
of their their betting being all that stuff. You want
to wash it like five million times in the hottest water.
(30:12):
You can probably with bleach if you can if you
can find it, which it's not that hard to go
to the store. Um, you want to bathe your pet.
You want to use a fleet home yeah. Uh, you
want to get a vacuum a lot, a lot, like
every day. Really, she says, at least every other day.
Is that what you said, Well, I mean every day
(30:32):
if you really want to Yeah, I would recommend twice
a day. Yeah, and not don't just vacuum and then
put it in the closet. If it's a canister or bag,
you want to empty that immediately outside. It's nice, you know. Yeah.
And you want to chase squirrels away. Yeah. And there's
a lot of stupid home remedies that say they work
that don't. Um brewers, yeast, garlic, vitamin supplements, ultrasonic collars,
(30:57):
flea collars, No, that stuff really works, trust me. Chance.
I got this one more thing on sand fleas. Did
you read this and talk about sand fleas um are
found in tropical areas another in Florida, but mentioned the Caribbean, Well,
the South American South Africa. I think that they were
native to the Caribbean, I'm sorry, sub Saharan Africa, and
(31:20):
they were taken got to Africa by the in the
slave trade. Actually, so that's how they spread, yeah, which
is just yeah. So if you've ever heard of chicos
or chiggers or jiggers, or niguas or peak quas or beachops.
These are all names for the sand flea. Uh. And
(31:43):
this lady was studying them, and she said, she's a
PhD student named Marlene. Uh named Marlene, and she was
studying ways to prevent um tangy assis infection in Madagascar,
which is spread by fleas, the sand fleas. And she said,
(32:03):
how are these things reproducing? And she said, look, I've
got a flea and they host in the body. These
are different kinds of fleas actually root and into your
under your skin and live there forever. Yeah, So it's disgusting. Well,
it's not just to extract them, right, it's not just
disgusting too. Once they move in and live there, and
(32:25):
they'll actually they'll they'll move in as groups often um
they spend the rest of their life there. Over time,
walking becomes painful, Eventually walking becomes impossible, and all of
a sudden, there goes your livelihood. So apparently the this
article mentions that affects the poors to the poor. So,
especially in Sub Saharan Africa, it's a real problem among
(32:47):
um the poverty stricken areas because you get a sand
flea in your foot, and that's it your toast. A
year later, pretty much so, she noticed that she had
one between her toes, and she said, you know what,
let me just let it burrow and see what happens.
And she did, and it lived a lot longer than usual,
(33:07):
uh two months, and she said it was still regularly
expelling liquid from its abdomen, but she never got any eggs.
And the reason uh this happened, she learned, and they
now have a new theory cooking is because she put
a sock and a shoe over it and didn't let
any other fleas in there. So basically this flee never
had sex and so never laid eggs. And what they
(33:30):
theorize now is that these female fleas can basically lay
there in a waiting state for longer than they should
ever be able to live, waiting for a male flee
to come around and fertilize the mature eggs. Science. Science,
So now they think basically that this is the deal,
and they don't know quite how that's going to help
them with fighting it, but they do know that it
(33:51):
takes two to tango, for sure, in your foot, in
your foot having sex under your skin. And speaking of
sex and fleas, we have to mention the Autobiography of
a Flea, which was an anonymous erotica book written in
the nineteenth century, like I think the eighteen eighties is
(34:12):
huge in London. Um, and it is about a flee
that that tells the tale of a girl it's attached
to who becomes the sex toy of a bunch of priests.
What autobiography of a flee? Uh? And uh, I guess
that's it. You've got anything that can top the Autobiography
of a Flee definitely not. Fan fiction is the ultimate.
(34:34):
So uh. If you want to learn more about fleas,
you can type the word fleas into the search bar
at how stuff works dot com. Since I said search parts,
time for listener medal. Uh spoiler alert on this people.
That says to do with movies that you may have
seen to stop the podcast now. That is so nice
if you don't want to be spoiled about Birdman in particular,
(34:56):
which we've already talked about. Okay, guys, for the last years,
I've cringed and groaned every time you make an error
or sweeping statement about films. Chuck, you discussed gailmo Guillermo
del Paro as the director of The Orphanage, and he
had nothing to do with the making out that film.
I'm misspoke. It's The Devil's Backbone, which was about an orphanage.
(35:17):
Didn't he wasn't also directed by a Latin America No,
but I was thinking of the Devil's Backbone, So he's right, Chuck.
You also stated once that James Cameron has not made
any good film since The Terminator, to ignoring the fantastic
blend of comedy in action that his true lies. Oh yeah,
that was pretty good. I didn't like it. That's why
I didn't mention it. Um. But when it comes to
(35:38):
some movies that change milk filmmaking at strong suspicion, that
would be my first listener mail. So Josh's criticisms a Birdman.
He he suggested first that the scene where Riggan confronts
the critic represents the director's pulpitting to the critics. Um,
he says, the critics who have attacked him, And he
says that can't be right because the guys in universal
(36:00):
praise for his movies. I'm sure he's been criticized potentially
unfairly in the past that's what I think. Uh. And
the ending of Birdman, Josh, it is heavily implied, and
we had a bunch of people say to this, actually, Uh,
it is heavily implied earlier in the film that the
type of psychosis he suffers from his daughter also shares
the moment when he returns to the room to find
(36:22):
she returns to find that her father has gone out
the window. We hear sirens indicating that he has in
fact jumped to his death in reality, but she looks
out the window and up to the sky, seeing a
hallucinatory image. Um, he will now live on for her
as Birdman and no longer her never their father. Her
reaction is also strongly indicative of this, as her face
(36:44):
does not reflect that of a sane person seeing a
human flying through the air, but instead of blissful ignorance.
So I've heard that theory that she's she's you know,
he did jump to her death and she's just like
suffers a psychotic breakdown, or that he actually did kill
himself on stage, and all of that last stuff is
not reality. Whose reality is it? I don't know who cares? Uh.
(37:07):
He also takes us to task on eight and a
half being the birth of surreal cinema because that goes
to own Chin and delou F, and that Citizen Kane
was a genesis of dark lighting. Not so, because fil
noir goes all the way back to the Cabinet of
Dr Calla, Gharry and m this guy's fun to watch
movies with and dude, this is the tame version he was.
(37:28):
Actually it was funny because he was kind of rude,
but then he was like, I love you guys, so
I think he want to wear your skin. I think
he was just being cheeky. Uh and also too, by
the way, dialing for murder, that was anatomy of a
murder that you were thinking of? From Auto premature I
looked for maybe not, but there was a movie called
(37:50):
Anatomy of a Murder by dial M. Right, yeah, right,
that's what you said, and I said, I don't know,
and then you kept talking and I looked it up
and apparently some people didn't hear me correct and say, yes,
you were right about Hitchcock. I guess it was anatomy
of a murder I was thinking of. Or there was
(38:11):
one that was just called M that was also well
m one and it was the first talkie to use
m R as a wilder release, wide wide release, and
that was premature, nor this correct. Uh, he said, this
email has already exceeded the link that moderate sanity would allow,
(38:32):
and it was even longer. And disagree, sir, You're clearly
crazy from the first sentence. I'm just kidding. That is
Travis Dukelo and he's a good guy. He just he's
a film buff and took it's the task. Thanks a
lot of Travis. It wasn't too bad. We've survived worse,
that's right. Uh. If you want to correct us or
(38:55):
throw in your two cents or whatever, because film appreciation,
I don't care what you say is subjective. True. Uh.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
(39:15):
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.
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