Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people [2] perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. [3] The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air.
NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) – Fleas capable of carrying the bubonic plague - sinisterly nicknamed the Black Death - have been found hitching rides in the fur of New York City's ubiquitous rats.
The flea is parasitic on house and field rats and seeks out other prey when its rodent host dies. Rats were an amplifying factor to bubonic plague due to their common association with humans as well as the nature of their blood. [15] The rat's blood allows the rat to withstand a major concentration of the plague. [15]
The Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis), also known as the tropical rat flea or the rat flea, is a parasite of rodents, primarily of the genus Rattus, and is a primary vector for bubonic plague and murine typhus. This occurs when a flea that has fed on an infected rodent bites a human, although this flea can live on any warm blooded mammal ...
The Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) engorged with blood after a blood meal. This species of flea is the primary vector for the transmission of Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for bubonic plague in most plague epidemics in Asia, Africa, and South America. Both male and female fleas feed on blood and can transmit the infection.
In comparison, the Black Death is recorded as occurring in periods during which rats' fleas could not have survived, i.e. hot Mediterranean summers above 78 °F (26 °C). [15] In terms of recurrence, the Black Death on average did not resurface in an area for between five and fifteen years after it had occurred. [19]
Oriental rat fleas, Xenopsylla cheopis, can carry the coccobacillus Yersinia pestis. The infected fleas feed on rodent vectors of this bacterium, such as the black rat, Rattus rattus, and then infect human populations with the plague, as has happened repeatedly from ancient times, as in the Plague of Justinian in 541–542. [46]
One of the worst plagues in history, the Black Death arrived on the shores of Europe in 1347. Five years later, around 25 to 50 million people were dead across the continent.