How Do Young Fleas Jump?
WouterFleas are very fast and agile creatures. They can jump great distances and can even fly. Though they are not considered a desirable pest, their agility and speed impress people. By understanding their movements, you can more effectively control and eliminate them. Whether they’re found on your dog or on another animal, it’s important to understand how they live and move.
Fleas have a remarkable ability to jump, reaching up to 100 times their own length. The mechanics of their jump have long been debated, but new research may have settled a major question about flea jumping. It’s now known that fleas jump using their feet and shins to push off the ground.
To parasitize large animals, young fleas must jump a long distance to get to their destination. To accomplish this feat, fleas need to have an exceptionally high resilin, as well as a well-developed pleural arch. The poorest jumpers, on the other hand, parasitize gliding and flying hosts. They’re also not well-developed, and they don’t have a pleural arch.
In order to jump, fleas rely on an elastomeric protein called resilin. The resilin is like a large stretchy pad, which expands and contracts as the flea jumps. The elasticity of resilin allows the flea to exert 100 times more force than it would with muscle alone. In short, this allows fleas to jump very high and catapult themselves off surfaces with remarkable speed.
