Stuff You Should Know - How Fleas Work

Episode Date: March 10, 2015

Fleas are the bane of the existence of pet owners. From their eggs to their lifespan to their feeding habits, fleas are practically designed to be a nuisance. They are parasites, after all. Get down on flea level with Josh and Chuck in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is Stuff You Should Know. Hey dude, how's it going? Good. Good. Uh, Chuck.

Yes. Chuck. Yes. You love New York, right? Sure do. I love New York, too. It's a good city. It's a great city.

In fact, I think we suggested first that someone do that on a t-shirt. I love New York. Yeah. I don't recall that. Sure. Oh man. You haven't been getting your checks? No.

Oh, well I'll make sure you get those. I don't think the person who really created that has been getting any checks for a long time. It's an interesting little thing to look up, I bet you it's unknown to history. Who did it? Yeah, who did I Heart New York and that iconic font. I think it is known. Oh it is?

Yeah, I think it is known. I think it was probably somebody who was contracted by like, not the Chamber of Commerce but some tourism board maybe for New York. Like the guy who wrote Root Off the Red Nose Reindeer? Yes, but he got his copy right back from Montgomery Award, remember? Yeah, that's true. It's like the most benevolent thing any corporation's ever done. My mind's still blown and that was two Christmases ago that we first learned about it.

Anyway, I wonder though, if I Heart New York is actually in the public domain or if it's just been pirated so much that they just don't even try to police it any longer. Maybe because we for our Canadian tour, Yumi designed the I Canadian Leaf Canada shirts. Right. In place of the heart. Yeah. Those are great. You can actually buy those in our store.

Yeah, that's true. We never plug our store. No, we don't. It's crazy. It's like we just pretend it doesn't exist. But it does exist. Yeah, I felt like a jerk for a second there by plugging the store out. I was like, wait a minute.

I think we've ever plugged it. We're allowed to do that. Yeah, you can actually buy shirts. Yeah, it's on our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. In the top nav, I think it says store. You just click that, all the stuff. The classic SYSK bowling shirt is on there. Classic.

There's just a lot of stuff. Yeah. Good stuff. Anyway, New York made the news recently, as it does from time to time, Chuck, in that it was discovered that the flea that was responsible for spreading bubonic plague has been found alive and well on the rats of New York. Did you know that? What?

Yeah. Now, the people who conducted this study, they just rounded up like some rats and tested them and they're like, yep, this one's got it. Yep, this one's got it. They were quick to point out that the bubonic plague itself, which is called yourcinia pestalis, it's a bacteria that causes the plague, which is nasty, right? Yeah. Did we do, we didn't do a bubonic plague.

We did black plague. Yeah, or black death or something. Yeah. That was a good episode. I think this is different. Sure. But the bubonic plague, it's caused by a bacteria, yourcinia pestalis, and they said that they didn't find yourcinia pestalis in the fleas.

They just found the fleas, the Oriental rat flea on the rats of New York. So they're saying, you're probably not going to catch the plague. It turns out the most people who get the plague, all seven of them every year in the US, get them here in the south. Oh, really? Yeah. That's nice. So steer clear of the southern rats, but the New York rats could just as easily spread

it too because everything's in place for it to spread. Right. So fleas. Man, that's good. That's an old school intro. It was okay. No, it's good. I'm a little rusty.

So yeah, fleas, we've done ticks and we've done flies and we've done bees. Termites was a really good one. Remember them? Termites. We have dabbled in the insect world. Yeah. And this is a Tracy Wilson article who wrote like all of the insect articles. You could tell this one came later and she's like, I'm so tired of talking about the thorax

that I'm not even going to mention it in this one. Just go read any of the other articles. Yeah. And there was one line in here where she was like, yeah, and like the life cycles like most other insects. Don't be dumb. Go read any of these hundred other ones I've written about it. So fleas are the bane of my existence.

And I'll pepper throughout the podcast my experience with my animals and fleas because I've had a couple of major infestations in my life. But they are parasites. And that means that they feed on the host in this case, drinking your blood like a tick does. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.

For some reason, I don't equate fleas with ticks, though, even though they're so similar. Yeah. But yes, they both drink blood and in fact, what the what the flea eats is called a blood meal. So gross. It's not just called dinner. They call it a blood meal. Yeah, they're about 2000 species of flea.

We are mainly going to concentrate on, I think they call it the cat flea. That's the most common here in the States. Yeah. And the cat flea is not just attracted to the cat. It also likes dogs. Also likes humans. A little bit. And then there's the dog flea, which is also attracted to cats and dogs and humans.

But it'll also attach itself to raccoons, pigs, livestock, wild animals. It's not very picky. Yeah. Like the flea you get on the squirrel in your yard, that squirrel that haunts you in your yard, is going to be different than the one on your pet inside, largely because that squirrel is never laying down for hours on end during the day where the flea will find a nice lazy dog and be like, this looks like a great place to fornicate and lay eggs and have a blood meal or two.

Yeah. And that's my whole thing with my mouth parts. But for that reason, if you ever do find a squirrel that's stunned or possibly dead just lying there, don't roll on it because the fleas will jump out onto you. Have you seen those photos? They're old, but of the dead squirrels with the action figures. I showed these to Scotty the other day. He had never seen any of them.

Oh, I should tell everybody. It's made an inquisitive look. It's super old, but someone at one point found a dead squirrel and got like G.I. Joe action figures and as if he had hunted it like, you know, doing a hunting pose with his leg propped up on the squirrel's head. Oh, yeah. And there's another one with a guy like holding up the squirrel's head like it was a big game. It's really funny.

And it's funny because they didn't kill these squirrels to do it because that would be a different deal. Squirrel died naturally. I'm assuming the squirrel is just like, yeah, run over in the road and someone was like, hey, let me get my G.I. It was like they were hunting big game because that's what you do. But you should not ever stage one of these by killing an animal. No, I'm you really probably shouldn't stage them anyway, because the people who did stage

them probably did get fleas and they got cat fleas or dog fleas. I'm sorry. And maybe the plague. So Chuck. Yes. Um, we said that they feed on blood. They have blood meals. They are kind of picky, but not altogether picky when it comes to the kind of hosts that

they have. Right. Yeah. And that you said that they're parasites and they're specifically ectoparasites, which means they live outside of the body. Yeah. Rather than endoparasites, which live inside the body, like a tapeworm, right, but the thing that they have in common is that all they do is take, take, take, and they give

nothing back in return. But grief. Right. Which you don't really want. So it's not a symbiotic relationship. It's a parasitic relationship that you have with your fleas. Yeah. It's a one way street.

Right. Um, fleas are the little guys, of course, um, we'll, I think, you know, we're talking about what we will describe it to wingless. They have these hard plates called sclerites that their body is covered with, which is why if you've ever had a flea and just mashed them between your thumb and finger and been like, take that, and then he goes, dang, and jumps off, you're like, how did that happen? Yeah. It's because it's that they're covered with these small plates to help that.

Sclerites. Yeah. Yeah. You got to really work to kill a flea, like with your fingernails. And it not only protects fleas from fingernails, it also protects them from falls because they will jump. They're known to jump. Yeah.

Should we go and talk about that? I think we should. It's pretty amazing stuff. It's pretty neat. Uh, what, what are the stats there? So a flea can jump about seven inches vertically. That's up and down. Yeah.

Seven to eight. And 13 inches horizontally, right? So big deal. Seven inches. Right. So remember in the cockroach episode where they can move 50 body lengths in a second to humans is like 250 miles an hour. This is very similar.

In human terms, a fleas jump would be a 250 foot vertical jump from a human. That's a lot. That is crazy. And a 450 foot horizontal jump. Yeah. So when this flea jumps six inches, you should be very impressed. It is impressive because the current record for a standing long jump is 12 feet and a flea could jump the equivalent of 450 feet.

That's right. Setting world records from your dog's butt on a daily basis. Just one of the amazing things about a flea and creepy. The exoskeleton is smooth looking when you're looking at the little flea on your knee. But what it really has is a bunch of little tiny hairs sort of comb back like a cool guy would do. Like the fawns. Like the fawns would do.

They're pointing away from the head and that those little backwards pointing hairs mean that they can sail through your dog or cat's fur without getting hooked. But if you go and try and get the flea out that will serve as a hook like Velcro. Yeah. Anchor it in that fur. Exactly. Which is why fine tooth combs work. But other like a brush won't because the fine tooth comb is so close together.

The tines are so close together that the flea still just can't hang on. But a brush it's like that was nothing. Yeah. And if you have a flea infestation or a bit of a flea problem, your flea comb is going to be a good way to tell. But it's not going to get rid of that many fleas. No. You can flea comb 24 seven and still have fleas.

That's the canary in the coal mine. Yeah. But it's a good place. Like if you do that or if you separate the hair and you see that dirt flea dirt they call it. Yeah. That's like either dried blood or poop and a good sign that your dog or cat has fleas. Yeah.

It's not flea eggs. No. Flea eggs are clear. That's right. And smooth. So fleas like you said suck blood. They eat what are called blood meals which I just can't get past. And they do so because they have specialized mouth parts which is basically a combination

of two saws on the side that puncture your skin. Those are called L-A-C-I-N-I-A-E. I was going to say lecinier. Great. And they form a saliva channel which will come into play later on. And then they also surround what's called the epipharinx which is the needle that sucks the blood. That's right.

And that is a stylet all together. It forms a stylet which is the puncturing organ and it basically it all just jabs into your skin and that epipharinx is working with basically stomach pumps to suck that stuff out. It's pretty impressive because it requires a lot of suction to get that blood out. So again pretty impressive with fleas. Jump far, suck really hard. They do suck.

Yeah. All right. Right after this break we're going to talk a little bit about that life cycle that we mentioned earlier. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell-all podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't

unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life I think about this and what I want to say.

Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for

it. We set up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Josh, the flea life cycle. Yeah. Again, you can just look to Tracy Wilson and be like, there's like other bugs. It's like a butterfly. It's still worth mentioning, so an adult has some eggs and those eggs are totally smooth.

They don't just appear smooth like the flea itself. They are totally smooth. And one of the reasons why they're smooth is because the eggs are meant to fall off of the host. Like the flea itself is having a blood meal on your leg, laying some eggs, pooping, just doing all sorts of crazy stuff, right? And when it lays its eggs, the eggs fall off and they fall into, if you're in the house, the fibers deep in the carpet, cracks in your hardwood floors, outside, they'll fall into

the soil and they are just meant to be sequestered away. Yeah. They need, in order to hatch and develop, they need a warm moist environment, about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 70 to 85% humidity. Although they'll go as low as like 45, anything below that and they're just not going to hatch. Yeah, exactly. That's why a good winter freeze is going to help your flea problem.

A dry winter freeze. A dry winter freeze. Your eggs are going to hatch in about 12 days and that 12-day span is one of the things that makes fleas so maddening because you can think you've killed all your fleas and then there are tens of thousands of them that are going to hatch 12 days later. Right. And you go kill those and by the time you kill those, they've already laid eggs and this cycle continues, which is why, and we'll get into it, you have to kill the fleas and their

eggs to take out a flea infestation. But at the same time, it's challenging. And so the egg is sitting there in your hardwood floor, your carpet or out in the soil and after about 12 days, if the conditions are right, it'll hatch and it'll turn into a larva. And the larva goes through three in-stars or cycles of development, stages of development and they molt after each one and after the third in-star, it says, I'm going back to my home and the cracks in the floor and spin me a nice cocoon and turn into a pupa. That's right.

And like we said, it's sort of like a butterfly, an adult flea is eventually going to emerge from that cocoon. It's not nearly as pretty as a beautiful iridescent butterfly and a butterfly doesn't have blood meals, as far as I know. Ooh, there's your next sci-fi movie. Blood meal butterfly. Yep. Look forward after Sharknado 3, preparing this march.

About half in a population of fleas, about half of them are eggs, which is why we said they're so problematic to get rid of and only about 5% reach adulthood. And one reason is because females can only lay the eggs if they've had that blood meal. If they're starving, they will die before they reproduce. Yeah. And what's neat about them too is when they're in the pupil stage and they're up in their cocoon and hanging out and developing and everything, because they emerge from the cocoon as an adult.

But while they're at pupa, they can tell through either vibrations and or sensing body heat. It's crazy. Whether there's food nearby. Like, should I hatch? Right. Because they feed on warm-blooded animals, so they can tell and they find these signals in the environment. And if the signals are right, they'll come out of their cocoon in, I think, a week or

something like that. If the signals aren't right, they can stay in their cocoon for up to a year. And they actually camouflage themselves. They roll around their cocoon in debris and hair and stuff like that. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. That's why if you have a vacation house and you've eradicated your fleas and then left for the winter, or I guess you'd be there in the winter, you've left for the spring.

Right. Depending on how you, I don't know how you do your vacation house. But when you come back, you can, that could be the signal, hey, there are hosts here now. Like it doesn't mean you've been overrun by fleas that whole time. They've just been laying in wait for you to come back. Yeah. And then you're back and they're saying, we're here. Ugh.

They've got some bloodmills on you. The females can lay about 20 eggs at a time or about 500 during a long life. I saw up to 2,000 in another article. Oh. Well, let me say between 500 and 2,000. 20 and 2,000. Yeah. But again, they won't lay eggs if they haven't eaten.

No. One of the other cool things about the flea larvae is that they actually don't eat blood meals. They eat just about everything else, hair, dead skin cells, flea droppings, nasty, nasty things. Just about anything that they'll find in the cracks in your floorboards or in your carpet or out in the soil, right? That's right.

But then once they hatch, they go after the blood meal. One of the other things that the flea larvae eats are tapeworm eggs, which makes fleas, again, super nasty and dirty little creatures. Because once they eat those tapeworm eggs, they grow up to become fleas that have tapeworms. Yeah. The tapeworm actually forms in the gut of the flea. It can be that tiny. And then all of a sudden your animal has tapeworms because they got bitten by a flea who injected

that junk into your dog. Or more likely, you accidentally ate a flea or a flea got into your food. Or your dog ate the flea. The tapeworm lodged itself in your dog's gut. The tapeworm eggs were excreted through your dog's rectum, under its bedding. You pet your dog, and then you touch your mouth, and the tapeworms crawl into your mouth, the tapeworm eggs, and then now you're infected. So there's like 80 different ways that a tapeworm, you can become infected with tapeworms just

from fleas. And specifically, dog fleas are the ones that carry tapeworms most likely. Fleas on dogs or the dog flea? The dog flea. So that's nasty. Here's some more nastiness for you. The reaction that you get when you get a flea bite or your dog gets, you know, when your dog is scratching, that is from the junk and the saliva of the flea.

Specifically the CTE F1 protein. Yeah, and it affects some people and animals more than others. It was really bad on my dog, Charlie. Like she had the hair falling out and the bald spots and the hot patches. She was like, these fleas are driving me crazy. I know, it's terrible. And the same thing can happen to people, you know, if you get a flea bite, you can see sometimes you have a few little bumps.

Yeah, some people react to it worse than others, but everybody pretty much gets bumps. Those bumps make it even worse because you can scratch it and some of those bumps will have bacteria, flea excrement around them. When you go to scratch them, you can break the skin and actually move the flea excrement that's dirty as all get out into your newly open break in the skin and you get all sorts of nasty infections from that. Yeah, you can also get murine typhus in the southern and southwestern parts here where we live.

That is caused by the bacteria Rickettsia typhi and mainly on the cat flea and the Oriental rat flea, but that's one of the things you can get when the flea is defecating. While they're eating, you scratch and you get that infected waste in the scratch or if you've broken your skin. So you get typhus from it, from flea poop that you scratch into your skin. And then of course, we talked about the plague, which is pretty interesting. The plague bacteria actually infects the flea itself and it develops this film in the flea's mid-gut.

So when the flea goes to eat a blood meal, it can't digest all the way, so then it goes to feast on the next person and when it punctures your skin, it actually barfs up the undigested blood meal that's now infected with the plague, ending your skin. Now you have the plague. Man, when you hear words like mid-gut and blood meal and mouth parts. And barf. Like barf is the least offensive of all those. That sounds cute.

So we can understand why everyone wants to get rid of fleas, but some people learn to love fleas, especially in the 19th century, and we'll talk about those people and their flea circuses right after this. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand-new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison.

It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope, but I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all, and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now?

You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.

In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology. Lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So, I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world

came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Josh, you mentioned flea circuses. I always thought that flea circuses were just fake and that they used magnets and other little things to move the bicycle, and that can be a flea circus. Those are called, I believe, illusory flea circuses? No, they have a name, humbug flea circuses. But there were, and I guess still are in some places, flea circuses that actually attach little leashes and chains to fleas, and they do things. They pull things around.

Yeah, because here's another astounding thing about fleas. They can lift up to 60 times their body weight, so they're enormously strong. Yeah. 60 times. Imagine lifting 60 times your body weight. You'd be crushed. You'd be crushed. That's a huge rock to you, you know?

Yeah. It's a boulder. It's a boulder. So fleas can lift their equivalent of boulders, and these boulders, especially in the 19th century, but starting about in the 1600s, came in the form of things like chariots, coaches, herces, just things that, like, say, a horse would draw, but in miniature. Yeah, and apparently before that even in the late 1500s, a guy named Mark Scaliot in 1578, he was a watchmaker, and apparently watchmakers were the first dudes who had the idea to attach

a flea to a chain, and in 1578 he did so. It was a lot consisting of 11 different pieces of steel, iron, and brass, which together with the key belonging to it weighed only one grain, whatever one grain was. It's like a pound and a half. No way. So this is the late 1500s? Yeah, and he was the first guy who was like, hey, this little flea can actually carry something.

Right. So that caught on, but apparently the paying public didn't catch on to what was really going on, which was these guys had figured out how to actually train fleas. One of the first things you have to teach them is to not jump, and apparently you train them not to jump by keeping them in a sealed container. I was going to say about beating them. Right. By, like, holding their parents hostage.

You keep them in a jar, I guess a see-through jar so they can see their parents on the other side are being held hostage, but they jump and jump and they get nowhere and they learn jumping is futile. So a very shallow something, I guess. Yeah, and then after they learn not to jump, you tie them up to this harness. This very tiny harness, and then they live in the harness for the rest of their lives. Which is a long. No, it's about three months.

But so let's say a flea lives a year. The first six months, it has to mature to about the age where it can learn, and it's big enough to put in a harness. You spend three months training it, and then it has a performing life of three months where it's basically just living in this harness carrying chariots around for people's entertainment. There are probably people out there feeling bad about the flea. Yeah, but don't forget the plague and flea excrement. It is kind of sad to an extent.

But in the 1600s, apparently, the public thought that the flea circus trainers were sorcerers. That was a big thing, because that explains it actually just as well. Well, they really caught on in places like Oktoberfest in Germany. They loved it. But they still do. I saw a video of a dude in Germany today showing his flea circus off. It seems like a very German thing to do. You know?

Sure. We train the fleas to pull the things. Is that Andy Kaufman? Sure. Coney Island and the Long Beach in California and New York City. Places like Blackpool, England. Wherever there were circuses and freak shows and stuff like that, you might find a flea circus going on.

Yeah, and there's a dude named Andy Clark who's got one going now. He's got his hands on 19th century manuals, magazine articles, reviews of the real flea circuses. And he's recreating, I guess. But we'd be remiss to not mention Albertoli. Isn't that his name? Who? Oh, Albertolato.

Who was he? He was like the flea circus guy, just the legend in the field. Oh, gotcha. He was the chief flea circus dude. He'd go over in his house and he's got fleas doing the dishes and he's cleaning up after them. Yeah. So Chuck, flea circus, kind of hard to do.

Most people just want to get rid of fleas. Yeah. So there's some ways. Yeah. And like I mentioned, I've had two major infestations, one in Los Angeles where I could not find, here's my advice. This is off script. If you want to get rid of your fleas, try and find the source area.

Find the head flea. Find the head flea and take a meeting. Work out a negotiation between the two of you and it should work out. No chariots. No chariots. Let all the parents go. So find your source. In LA, I could not find my source.

It was driving me crazy. And finally, I was going outside, I thought let me go in the yard and we had this sort of a... Dead squirrel. Now it was a garage on the side of the house. Filled with dead squirrels. Filled with dead squirrels and that was it. And on the other side of the garage, it was like two feet of space about 15 feet long

between that and the fence. And that's just the place where nothing ever went. Oh yeah. You know. Except the dogs. Yeah, except the dogs. I was walking over there and what I do is I walk around the yard barefoot if I'm looking outside because...

Yeah, that's a thing. Yeah, you look down and see if they jump on you. And I walked around the corner to this thing, dude, and in five seconds I had probably a thousand fleas just crawling all over me. Was it sandy over there at all? It was kind of dirty and it was dank and dark. Okay, yeah, humid and warm, I imagine. Just not like...

Like I said, it was not well-traveled. And dude, I was like, all right, this is it. And I did the thing I don't normally do, which is get a lot of chemicals and spray it all over it. Did you set it on fire? Set it on fire. Blew it up. And pooped on it.

And that did it. Here's some of my excrement, fleas. And then I had a situation here in Atlanta where I actually had a guy come out and spray nematodes instead of chemicals. You can apparently spray your basement and house and floorboards with nematodes. Those are flatworms, right? Yeah, they're living things apparently that, I guess, the fleas? I would guess, yeah.

I have no idea, but that worked. And I also use what were... Did you overrun with nematodes now? No, they were great. They left. Yeah, sprinkle a little on your coffee. So those chemicals you mentioned, there's some pretty cool chemicals. Yeah, there's some topical treatments that you can use on your animals, which they say

they're safe. I try to avoid them just because, I don't know, I just don't think that the chemicals that seep into the skin of your animal is ever good. No, I mean, it's a great... You make a good point. Yeah. But I'm forced to use them, which I hate. But if you could control the fleas in the environment, you could conceivably not have to use the

chemicals on them. That's what the nematode guy said. He's like, I don't ever use that stuff. He said, you stop it before it starts. I was like, well, good for you. You've got tons of nematodes in that can. You've got a fancy pants dog. But when it comes to those topical things, IGRs, insect growth regulators.

My favorite is the Kytan synthesis inhibitor. That's mean. It basically creates mutant fleas. Soft fleas. That never grow their exoskeleton, right? Which means they never develop fully, which means they're toast. Yeah. Which means they can be killed by dog scratches and bites and things.

Those IGRs that I mentioned keep fleas from hatching because they mimic flea hormones. And some of these things will kill just the eggs. Some kill adult fleas. Some kill both. You pretty much want something that kills it all. Yeah. You want to get the worst thing you can get for the flea. So if you do have an infestation, Tracey Wilson recommends some steps to take all at

the same time. You don't want to do one or the other. You want to treat your pets and the dank area between your garage and the fence at the same time. You want to wash all of your pets clothing, all of their... Their bedding. Their bedding. Their sweaters.

All that stuff. You want to wash it like five million times in the hottest water you can, probably with bleach if you can find it. It's not that hard. Just go to the store. You want to bathe your pet. You want to use a flea comb. You want to...

Got to vacuum a lot. A lot. Like every day, really. She says at least every other day. Yeah. Is that what you said? Well, I mean every day if you really want to. Yeah.

I would recommend twice a day. And don't just vacuum and then put it in the closet. If it's a canister or a bag, you want to empty that immediately outside. It's nice. You know? Yeah. And you want to chase squirrels away. Yeah.

And there's a lot of stupid home remedies that say they work that don't. Brewer's yeast, garlic, vitamin supplements, ultrasonic collars, flea collars, no, that stuff really works. No. Trust me. Chance. I got this one more thing on sand fleas. Did you read this?

Yeah. Can I talk about it? Sure. Sand fleas are found in tropical areas, I know they're in Florida, but it mentions the Caribbean, South America and South Africa. I think that they were native to the Caribbean. I'm sorry. Sub-Saharan Africa.

Okay. And they were taken to Africa by the, in the slave trade actually. So that's how they spread? Yeah. Which is just, yeah. So if you've ever heard of chigos or chiggers or jiggers or niguas or piquas or bichos that pays, these are all names for the sand flea. And this lady was studying them and she said, she's a PhD student named Marlene, named Marlene.

She was studying ways to prevent tonguey asses infection in Madagascar, which is spread by fleas, the sand fleas. And she said, how are these things reproducing? And she said, look, I've got a flea and they host in the body. These are different kinds of fleas, actually root and into your, under your skin and live there forever. Yeah. So it's disgusting.

Well, it's not just to extract them. Right. It's not just disgusting too. Once they, they move in and live there and they'll actually, they'll move in as groups often. Yeah. They spend the rest of their life there over time, walking becomes painful, eventually walking becomes impossible.

And all of a sudden there goes your livelihood. So apparently the, this article mentions it affects the poorest of the poor. Yeah. So especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, it's a real problem among the poverty stricken areas because you get a sand flea in your foot and that's it, your toast a year later. Pretty much. So she noticed that she had one between her toes and she said, you know what, let me just let it burrow and see what happens and she did.

And it lived a lot longer than usual, two months. And she said it was still regularly expelling liquid from its abdomen, but she never got any eggs. And the reason this happened, she learned and they now have a new theory cooking is because she put a sock and a shoe over it and didn't let any other fleas in there. So basically this flea never had sex. And so never laid eggs and what they theorize now is that these female fleas can basically lay there in a waiting state for longer than they should ever be able to live waiting for

a male flea to come around and fertilize the mature eggs. Science. Science. So now they think basically that this is the deal and they don't know quite how that's going to help them with fighting it, but they do know that it takes two to tango for sure. In your foot. In your foot. In your foot.

Having sex under your skin. And speaking of sex and fleas, we have to mention the autobiography of a flea, which was an anonymous erotica book written in the 19th century. I think the 1880s is huge in London and it is about a flea that tells the tale of a girl it's attached to who becomes the sex toy of a bunch of priests. What? The autobiography of a flea, and I guess that's it you got anything that can top the autobiography of a flea?

Definitely not. Flee fan fiction is the ultimate. So if you want to learn more about fleas, you can type the word fleas into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Spoiler alert on this people. This has to do with movies that you may not have seen, so stop the podcast now. If you don't want to be spoiled about Birdman in particular, which we have already talked

about. Okay. Guys, for the last few years I've cringed and groaned every time you make an error or sweeping statement about films. Chuck, you discuss Guillermo Del Toro as the director of the orphanage, and he had nothing to do with the making of that film. I misspoke. It's the devil's backbone, which was about an orphanage.

Didn't he, wasn't he an executive producer? No, but I was thinking of the devil's backbone. He's right. Chuck, you also stated once that James Cameron has not made any good films since Terminator 2, ignoring the fantastic blend of comedy and action that his true lies. Oh yeah, that was a pretty good one. I didn't like it. That's why I didn't mention it.

But when it comes to some movies that change filmmaking at strong suspicion, that would be my first listener mail. So Josh's criticisms of Birdman, he suggested first that the scene where Reagan confronts the critic represents the director's pulpitting to the critics. He says the critics who have attacked him, and he says, that can't be right, because the guy's gotten universal praise for his movies. I'm sure he's been criticized potentially unfairly in the past. That's what I think.

And the ending of Birdman Josh, it is heavily implied, and we had a bunch of people say this, it is heavily implied earlier in the film that the type of psychosis he suffers from, his daughter also shares. The moment when he returns to the room to find, she returns to find that her father has gone out the window. We hear Sirens indicating that he has in fact jumped to his death in reality, but she looks out the window and up to the sky seeing a hallucinatory image. He will now live on for her as Birdman, and no longer her never-their father.

Her reaction is also strongly indicative of this as her face does not reflect that of a sane person seeing a human flying through the air, but instead of blissful ignorance. So I've heard that theory that she's, you know, he did jump to her death, and she suffers a psychotic breakdown. Or that he actually did kill himself on stage, and all of that last stuff is not reality. Whose reality is it? I don't know. I don't care.

He also takes us to task on eight and a half being the birth of surreal cinema, because that goes to Un Chin and Deleu for 1929, and that Citizen Kane was a genesis of dark lighting, not so, because Phil Noir goes all the way back to 1920 to the cabinet of Dr. Caligari and M in 1931. I thought this guy's fun to watch movies with. Dude, this is the tame version. He was actually, it was funny because he was kind of rude, but then he was like, I love you guys.

I just want to wear your skin. I think he was just being cheeky. And also too, by the way, Dial Infra-Murder. That was Anatomy of a Murder that you were thinking of from Autopriminger. I looked it up. Or maybe not, but there was a movie called Anatomy of a Murder by Autopriminger. Yeah, yeah. Dial Infra- Right, yeah.

We made the correction. Dial Infra-Murder was Hitchcock. Right. That's what you said, and I said, I don't know, and then you kept talking, and I looked it up. Right. And apparently some people didn't hear me correct and say, yes, you were right about Hitchcock.

I guess it was Anatomy of a Murder I was thinking of. Or there was one that was just called M. That was also new. Well, M is 1931, and it was the first talkie to use M.R. as a wild release, wide release. And that was Preminger? No. Or maybe it was. We're going to need correction for this correction. He said this email has already exceeded the length that moderate sanity would allow, and

that was even longer, and I disagree, sir. You're clearly crazy. From the first sentence. I'm just kidding. That is Travis Duklow, and he's a good guy. He's a film buff, and took us to task. Thanks a lot, Travis. It wasn't too bad.

No. We've survived worse. That's right. If you want to correct us or throw in your two cents or whatever, because film appreciation, I don't care what you say, is subjective. True. Thank you. You can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast.

You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode.

We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have for you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself?

No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.