Heat sparks ticks and flea into action

There is need for an extra care for your pets this season cos it's all over the news. according to the chronicle

TICK and flea season has come early this year in Toowoomba, the result of significantly warmer weather conditions.A warmer-than-average winter and spring have provided the perfect breeding conditions for the parasites and both pet owners and householders are being warned to stay alert.Apart from causing discomfort, both ticks and fleas can carry diseases that affect humans and pets.

Toowoomba Veterinary Hospital veterinarian Louis Gilshenan said he had seen more ticks this season then usual.“We usually see ticks after a rain and when it is warm,” Mr Gilshenan said.“Fleas are always going to start in spring; their numbers increase because their lifecycle speeds up when it is more humid.

“Flea control should be done all year and the most effective is a topical spot on treatment every month and there is also a new tablet out, which is very effective at controlling fleas.

”Mr Gilshenan said people can get their house sprayed, but should concentrate more on breaking the lifecycle by treating your animals.“With ticks, it is not 100 per cent prevention,” he said.“We advise spot on treatment every two weeks, or a tablet that is taken every two days. A tick collar works quite effectively as well.“People who live in tick areas like on the escarpment, down the range, east Toowoomba and Highfields really need to be tick aware.”

Weird and Wonderful Facts About Flea

Flea Bites

To finish, we present a few of the lesser-known facts about fleas that we've accumulated during 17 years in the business of flea control:

Flea Species

Fleas vary in size quite considerably. In the UK, the Cat Flea is one of the smallest at about 2.5mm long. On the other end of the scale, a heavily pregnant female Human Flea clocks in at an earth-shaking 4mm or so. Elsewhere in the world, the largest known flea is the Hystrichopsylla schefferi — a flea found in the nest of a mountain beaver in Washington State, USA. It can grow up to 8mm long and has been known to bite a man's arm off at the shoulder blade (Ed's note: OK, there's a certain amount of poetic licence there — but they do grow to 8mm). Britain's largest flea is, coincidentally, a parasite of Britain's smallest mammal. Hystrichopsylla talpae (usually found on moles) grow to a length of 6.5mm and can be found on the pygmy shrew. Pity the poor pygmy shrew; in relative terms, it would be the same as a man being attacked by a blood-sucking rat. In nearly all species, the female is larger than the male. The flea has a considerable number of relatives. There are more than 2000 different species of flea around the world. 63 species of flea are found in the UK. About 10 of those could be found in homes. In our own homes, the theoretical number of flea eggs left around your house after three days of an infestation of 500 fleas is 20,000. The flea most commonly found on cats and dogs in this country is the Ctenocephalides felis (the cat flea to you or I). The largest ever recorded infestation of human fleas in the UK was found at a pig farm in 1986. It reportedly turned an area the size of a tennis court brown. We estimate that to cover an area of that size, this particular flea family must have numbered around 133,378,450! It is now extremely rare to find a human flea on a human (or, for that matter, a cat or a dog) in the UK — due to increased hygiene standards.

Fleas and Health

• Fleas were responsible for one of the greatest changes in the UK’s social history. The Black Rat Flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) was responsible for transmitting what was then called Black Death in the mid-14th century.
• These deaths decimated the workforce of labourers in what was still a predominantly agricultural Britain. Survivors found themselves in much greater demand and they could command very much higher wages. The balance of power consequently shifted dramatically from landowner to farm worker.
• Later outbreaks of Black Death — now known as Bubonic Plague — were transmitted by the same species of flea. These outbreaks caused a further 35,000 deaths in 1625 and 20,000 in 1665 — in London alone.
• The flea population itself has been decimated by the outbreak of disease. Most notably when myxomatosis was introduced to kill around 100 million rabbits in the UK. Collateral damage included an estimated seven billion rabbit fleas.

Fleas and Love

• The great metaphysical poet, John Donne (1572-1631) wrote an ode titled "On A Flea On His Mistress' Bosom." Here we publish a short extract:
  
  Madam, that flea which crept between your brest
  I envyde that there he should make his rest;
  The little creature's fortune was soe good
  That angells' feed not on so precious food
  How it did sucke, how eagerly sucke you!
  Madam, shall fleas before me tickle you?

• Men belonging to the Lundaya Murats tribe based in Borneo can be fined one pig if caught picking the fleas from the hair of a married woman.
• The male flea sports an organ approximately 2.5 times the length of its own body — the largest, relative to its size, of any insect.
• Also a useful part of the male's sexual equipment are two antennae bearing sink-plunger-like suckers. It was believed that these were used to subdue the female. Top thinkers amongst the flea intelligencia now believe that the male needs these suckers just to hang on during the act. If you doubt the necessity for this, bear in mind that when a flea jumps, it does so with an acceleration roughly equal to that of the Apollo space rocket.
• The female flea lays her eggs at a prodigious rate. An average of about 30-40 a day. A single female flea will probably lay around 100 eggs during her adult lifespan. That's a theoretical 50 new breeding pairs — each producing another 100 eggs. You can see how a minor problem can rapidly develop into a bad infestation.

Fleas and Music

• The instrument of choice amongst flea musicians worldwide is the ukelele. It was so named in 1878 after a Portugese sailor arrived in Hawaii bearing a braguinho - a guitar-like instrument. As he played, the locals thought his fingers as nimble as dancing fleas, or in the Hawaiian language, uke (dancing) lele (flea).

Fleas and Games

• One of Britain’s oldest games can trace its origins to the flea. In approximately 15 different European languages, the word ‘tiddlywinks’ translates as ‘the game of the flea.’

Fleas and Blackmail

• Fleas have been used as a notably unsuccessful method of blackmail. In 1996, a transexual named Lydia Banot was jailed for eight years at the Old Bailey after blackmailing Harrods. The sex-change extortionist had threatened to release a plague of fleas in the designer clothing department unless a demand for £5 million was met. There’s optimism for you.

General Flea Control

Scientific classification: Order Siphonaptera. Dog fleas are classified as Ctenocephalides canis, cat fleas as Ctenocephalides felis felis, and human fleas as Pulex irritans. The rat flea of the tropics is classified as Xenopsylla cheopis; the rat flea of Europe as Ceratophyllus fasciatus. The sticktight flea is classified as Echidnophaga gallinacea.

Flea is the general name for parasitical, wingless insects. The adults of flea feed on the blood of their host they are seen as surface parasites on the skin of human beings, other mammals, and birds. They are found in every situation and place in the world. They lay eggs at the edges of carpets, between floorboards, in the folds of curtains, in refuse piles, and in other places that provide safety and adequate nutrition for the larvae. These eggs become larva in five to seven days and they are armed with biting mouthparts. They nourish for two to three weeks on crude refuse; the larvae spin cocoons and enter a pupa stage which turns to an adult in about one to two weeks. Adult fleas are about 1 to 8 mm in length; they have wide, rather flat, polished bodies, which are light red-brown to very dark brown, short antennae, and piercing and sucking mouthparts. They have minute or no eyes at all. They have long and powerful legs which enable them to leap moderately high into the air.

Now, there are numerous flea species and they infest household pets and domestic animals. The dog flea and the cat flea are two of the most common species, both of which are parasites; sometimes they are on human beings, poultry, and livestock in the absence of their natural host. The human flea, the species commonly found on people, is distributed throughout the world. The dog flea, cat flea, and human flea are all intermediate hosts of a common cat and dog parasite, the cucumber tapeworm (Dipylidium caninum). Tapeworm eggs are deposited in faecal matter, and some of these eggs may clutch to the fur of the primary host. Flea larvae swallow the tapeworm eggs. The worm larva remains within the flea during all its life stages, but becomes infective only in the adult flea. An animal or human being becomes infected when it swallows an infected flea, as, for example, when an animal licks its fur. The adult tapeworm then begins to develop inside the host animal. Human cases are rare and accidental. The rat fleas, in the tropics and in Europe, are important carriers of bubonic plague, as is the sticktight flea, which is also noted for its habit of clinging tenaciously to its host. Dog eczema is usually connected with the presence of fleas.

To control fleas, you have to target the adult and the larva, in summary you have to destroy the adults and making breeding places unsuitable for larval life. Adult fleas are destroyed by judicious application of insecticides or petroleum jelly. These agents must be properly used to avoid harm to the infected animal or person.