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Fleas do not live on humans. They generally bite down at the feet, ankles, and legs by jumping from an infested pet or other animal, but it is most likely to be from an infested pet bed.
Although fleas rarely take up residence on human skin, they can and will live happily in a human home with no pets present. If fleas find their way into your house and don't find a dog, cat, or bunny on which to feed, they will consider you the next best thing.
Fleas are small insects that survive by feeding on animal or human blood. Their bites can cause discomfort, itchiness, and irritation. Sometimes, fleas can infect people or pets with the germs that cause flea-borne typhus, plague, or cat scratch disease.
Fleas can survive and reproduce on a diet of human blood alone. However, this doesn't occur in natural settings. They must be able to feed freely for 12 hours.
In natural settings, fleas can’t survive or lay eggs on a diet of human blood. To do so, they’d need to feed freely for days, which doesn’t happen on humans. Even if they could feed enough, fertility is greatly reduced on human blood. Fleas co-evolved along with their primary hosts.
Fleas do not generally live on humans, as they are not well-adapted to the temperature of the human body, which is lower than that of their preferred animal hosts. Human blood may supply nutrients for fleas, but human skin lacks the hair density of animal hosts, such as cats and dogs.
They normally feed on the blood of animals, but they can also feed on the blood of humans. Fleas don’t have wings, but they have flat bodies and strong legs, which allow them to jump long...
Many species of fleas can feed on humans. The human flea, Pulex irritans, is less-commonly seen these in industrialized areas. This species is not an effective vector of disease but can serve as an intermediate host for the cestodes Dipylidium caninum and Hymenolepis nana.
How do fleas bite people? Fleas feed on blood and they want blood from mammals. This includes pets, sure, and other animals, but they are more than willing to feed on humans, too. Fleas will bite a human to get at the blood vessels below the skin and their bodies are built to do so.
All adult fleas are obligatory blood-feeders. In contrast, immature stages are free-living detritus feeders and their survival and development time depend on environmental factors. Once reaching the adult stage, fleas must find a suitable (or ideally optimal) host.