Ticks, Lice & Fleas

Blood feeding arthropods are of great concern to the public not only because of their annoying and often painful bites, but more importantly because many are vectors of pathogens.

• More than 2,400 species exist worldwide.
• Attracted to animals by body heat, movement and the carbon dioxide that animals exhale.
• Adults feed on blood; larvae feed on organic debris.
• Found on cats and dogs year-round, but most common during warm and humid weather.
• Life span on dogs is typically more than 100 days — enough time for a pair of fleas and their descendants to produce millions of offspring. Under ideal
• conditions, assuming no mortality, a pair of fleas has the potential to produce more than 20 trillion descendants in one year.
• Found on opossums, rats, other rodents and humans.
• Can transmit tapeworms from dogs and rodents to other animals and humans.
• Can jump up to 150 times the length of their body.
• Transmit several major human diseases including plague, murine typhus, Bartonellosis and tapeworms.