How Do Fleas Breed?

Video Transcript

"How do fleas breed? Female fleas after having fed on blood of a host, lay eggs up to twenty at a time and those eggs will hatch after two to two weeks of incubation on...sometimes the host animal, sometimes they fall off and they incubate in bedding or things like that. And then after that, two to two weeks of incubation, they hatch out into a larvae form, and that larvae within one to two weeks from that larvae form will pupa into another larvae, they actually go through three larval stages, so they go larvae, pupa, larval, pupa, larval, pupa, before they finally get ready to become an adult flea. Now, in their last pupa form before they become an adult flea, they're actually at a pretty important time and they have to wait until they know that a host is going to be nearby before they hatch out of their cocoon. Now their cocoon at that point is pretty insecticide proof, there's really no way to kill the pupa form of the flea, so it has to wait until it has, it know that there's a host nearby and it knows that through either warmth, sonic vibrations like movement, and it also knows that through carbon dioxide actually, it can detect carbon dioxide in its vicinity, rising levels of it, and that will indicate that there's a prey animal nearby, and the larvae will then pupa for its last time to come out an adult flea, jump onto its host and start the whole cycle all over again."