Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should not Hey, dude, how's it going good?
Speaker 1: How are you man? Good? Chuck? Yes, Chuck? Yes, you
Speaker 1: love New York right? Sure do? I love New York too.
Speaker 1: It's good city. It's a great city. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think we suggested first let someone do that on a
Speaker 1: T shirt. I love New York. Yeah. I don't recall
Speaker 1: that he hadn't been getting your checks. No, well, I'll
Speaker 1: make sure you get those. I don't think the person
Speaker 1: who really created that has been getting any checks for
Speaker 1: a long time. Yeah, that'd be an interesting little thing
Speaker 1: to look up a bit. It's unknown to history who
Speaker 1: who did it? Yeah? Who did? I heart New York
Speaker 1: and that iconic font. I think it is known it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is. And I think it was probably
Speaker 1: somebody who's contracted by, like not the Chamber of Commerce,
Speaker 1: but some tourism board maybe for New York, like the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Yes, but
Speaker 1: he got his copyright back from Montgomery Ward. Remember, it's
Speaker 1: like the most benevolent thing any corporation has ever done.
Speaker 1: My mind's still blown. And that was two Christmases ago
Speaker 1: that we first learned about it. Anyway, I wonder, though,
Speaker 1: if I Heart New York is actually in the public domain,
Speaker 1: or if it's just been pirated so much that they
Speaker 1: just don't even try to police it any longer. Maybe
Speaker 1: because we for our Canadian tour um you may design
Speaker 1: the Canadian leaf Canada shirts in place of the Heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are great. You can actually buy those in our store.
Speaker 1: It's true. We never plug our store. No, we don't.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It's like we just pretend it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: It does exist. I felt like a jerk for a
Speaker 1: second there by plugging the store. I was like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I think we've ever plugged it. We're allowed
Speaker 1: to do that. You can actually buy shirts. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: on our website. Stuff you should know dot com in
Speaker 1: the top nav. I think it's as store. You just
Speaker 1: click that. All all the stuff. The classic s y
Speaker 1: s K Bowling shirt is on their classic Uh. There's
Speaker 1: just a lot of stuff, good stuff. So anyway, New York,
Speaker 1: New York made the news recently, as it does from
Speaker 1: time and time, Chuck, and that it was discovered that
Speaker 1: the flee that was responsible for spreading bubonic plague has
Speaker 1: been found alive and well on the rats of New York.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? What? Yeah? Now, the the people
Speaker 1: UM who conducted the study, they just rounded up like
Speaker 1: some rats and tested them, and they're like, Yep, this
Speaker 1: one's got it. Yep, this one's got it. They were
Speaker 1: quick to point out that the bubonic plague itself, which
Speaker 1: is called um your Cinea pistalis, it's a bacteria that
Speaker 1: causes the plague, which is nasty. Right, did we do
Speaker 1: We didn't do a bubonic plague? Yeah, or black death
Speaker 1: or something that was a good episode. I think this
Speaker 1: is different. But the bubonic plague, it's it's caused by
Speaker 1: a back there you're sending a pistles. And they said
Speaker 1: that they didn't find you're sending a pistalis in the fleas.
Speaker 1: They just found the fleas, the oriental rat flea on
Speaker 1: the rats of New York. So they're saying, you're probably
Speaker 1: not going to catch the plague. It turns out the
Speaker 1: most people who get the plague all seven of them
Speaker 1: every year in the US get them here in the south. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nice, so steer clear of the southern rats. But
Speaker 1: the New York rats could just easily spread it to
Speaker 1: because everything's in place for it to spread, right, So
Speaker 1: fleece man. That's a good that's an old school intro.
Speaker 1: It was okay, it's goods a little rusty. So yeah, fleas.
Speaker 1: We've done ticks, and we've done um flies, and we've
Speaker 1: done these termites. Was a really good remember them termites.
Speaker 1: We have dabbled in the insect world. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is a Tracy Wilson article who wrote, like all all
Speaker 1: of the insect articles, you could tell this phone came
Speaker 1: later and she's like, I'm so tired of talking about
Speaker 1: the thorax that I'm not even going to mention it
Speaker 1: in this one. Just go read any of the other articles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there was one line in here where she was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like the life cycles like most other insects, don't
Speaker 1: be dumb. Read any of these hundred other ones I've
Speaker 1: written about it. So please are the bane of my existence.
Speaker 1: And I'll pepper throughout the podcast my experience with my
Speaker 1: animals and fleas because I've had a couple of major
Speaker 1: infestations in my life. But um, they are parasites, and
Speaker 1: that means that they feed on the host, in this
Speaker 1: case drinking your blood like a tick does. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. For some reason, I don't equate fleas with
Speaker 1: ticks though, even though they're so similar. But yes, they
Speaker 1: both drink blood. And in fact, what the what the
Speaker 1: flea eats is called the blood meal. It's not it
Speaker 1: is called dinner. They call it a blood meal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're about two thousand species of flea. Um. We are
Speaker 1: mainly going to concentrate on. I think they call it
Speaker 1: the cat flea. That's the most common here in the States. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And the cat flee is not just attracted to the cat,
Speaker 1: it also likes dogs, also likes humans a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's the dog flee, which is also attracted
Speaker 1: to cats and dogs and humans, but it will also
Speaker 1: attach itself to raccoons, pigs, livestock, wild animals. It's not
Speaker 1: very picky. Yeah, like the flea you get and you're
Speaker 1: on the squirrel in your yard, that squirrel that haunts
Speaker 1: you in your yard, um is going to be different
Speaker 1: than the one on your pet. Inside largely because that
Speaker 1: squirrel is never laying down for hours on end during
Speaker 1: the day. Where the flea will, you know, find a
Speaker 1: nice lazy dog and be like this looks like a
Speaker 1: great place to fornicate and lay eggs and have a
Speaker 1: blood meal or two. Do with my whole thing with
Speaker 1: my mouthparts. For that reason, if you ever do find
Speaker 1: a squirrel that's stunned or possibly dead, just lying there,
Speaker 1: don't roll on it because the fleas will jump out
Speaker 1: onto you. Have you seen those photos, they're old, but
Speaker 1: of the dead squirrels with the action figures, showed these
Speaker 1: Discotti the other day. He had never seen the I
Speaker 1: should tell everybody has made an inquisitive Yeah, it's super old.
Speaker 1: But someone at one point found a dead squirrel and
Speaker 1: got like g I. Joe action figures and as if
Speaker 1: he had hunted it, like you know, doing a hunting
Speaker 1: pose with his leg propped up on the squirrel's head.
Speaker 1: And there's another one with the guy like holding up
Speaker 1: the squirrel's head like it was a big game. It's
Speaker 1: really funny. And it's funny because they didn't kill these
Speaker 1: squirrels to do it, because that would be a different deal.
Speaker 1: Squirrel died naturally, I'm assuming the squirrels just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: run over in the road and someone was like, hey,
Speaker 1: let me get my gho's out, like they were hunting
Speaker 1: big game, because that's what you do. But should not
Speaker 1: ever stage one of these killing an animal? No, And
Speaker 1: you really probably shouldn't stage them anyway, because the people
Speaker 1: who did stage them probably did get fleas, and they
Speaker 1: got cat fleas or dog fleas, I'm sorry, and maybe
Speaker 1: the plague. So chuck. Um we said that they feed
Speaker 1: on blood, they have blood meals. They are kind of picky,
Speaker 1: but not altogether picky when it comes to the kind
Speaker 1: of hosts that they have, right, and that you said
Speaker 1: that they're parasites, and they're specifically ectoparasites, which means they
Speaker 1: live outside of the body, yeah, rather than endoparasites, which
Speaker 1: live inside the body. But the thing that they have
Speaker 1: in common is that all they do is take, take, take,
Speaker 1: and they give nothing back in return but grief, which
Speaker 1: you don't really want. So it's not a symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 1: It's a parasitic relationship that you have with your fleas.
Speaker 1: That's a one way street, right, Um. Fleas are the
Speaker 1: little guys, of course, um We we'll I think you
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about. What we will describe it.
Speaker 1: It's wingless um. They have these hard plates called sclare
Speaker 1: rites um that their body is covered with, which is
Speaker 1: why if you've ever had a flee and just mash
Speaker 1: them between your thumb and finger and been like take that,
Speaker 1: and then he goes and jumps off, like how did
Speaker 1: that happen? It's because he's that they're covered with these
Speaker 1: small plates to help that sclare rites. Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: really work to kill a flea, like with your fingernails,
Speaker 1: and it not only protects fleece from fingernails, it also
Speaker 1: protects them from falls because they will jump. They're known
Speaker 1: to jump. Yes, we go ahead and talk about that.
Speaker 1: I think we should. It's pretty amazing stuff, pretty neat.
Speaker 1: What are the stats there? So a flea can jump
Speaker 1: about seven inches vertically, that's up and down. Yeah, seven
Speaker 1: to eight and thirteen inches horizontally, right, So big deal.
Speaker 1: Seven inches. So remember in the cockroach episode where they
Speaker 1: can move fifty body links in a second to humans
Speaker 1: is like two fifty miles an hour. This is very
Speaker 1: similar um in human terms, a flea's jump would be
Speaker 1: a two hundred and fifty ft vertical jump from a
Speaker 1: human that's a lot. That is crazy, and four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty ft horizontal jump. Yeah, so when this fleet
Speaker 1: jump six inches, you should be very impressed. It is
Speaker 1: impressive because the current record for a standing long jump
Speaker 1: is twelve ft and a fleet could jump the equivalent
Speaker 1: of four fifty ft. That's right, setting world records from
Speaker 1: your dog's but on a daily basis just one of
Speaker 1: the amazing things about a flea um and creepy. Uh.
Speaker 1: The exoskeleton is smooth looking when you're looking at the
Speaker 1: little fleet on your knee, but what it really has
Speaker 1: is a bunch of little tiny hairs um sort of
Speaker 1: comb back like like a cool guy would do, like
Speaker 1: the fons, like the fonds would do. They're pointing a
Speaker 1: away from the head and that those little backwards pointing
Speaker 1: hairs mean that they can sail through your dog or
Speaker 1: cat's fur without getting hooked. But if you go and
Speaker 1: try and get the fleet out, that will serve as
Speaker 1: a hook like velcro. Yeah, anchor it in that fur.
Speaker 1: Which is why I fine tooth combs work, but other
Speaker 1: like a brush won't because the fine tooth comb is
Speaker 1: so close together. The times are so close together that
Speaker 1: the fleet still just can't hang on but a brush
Speaker 1: it's like that was nothing. Yeah, and if you have
Speaker 1: a flea infestation or a bit of a fleet problem, uh,
Speaker 1: your fleet comb is gonna be a good way to tell.
Speaker 1: But it's not gonna get rid of that many fleas.
Speaker 1: You know, you can flee comb and still have fleas.
Speaker 1: It's the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: a good place. Like if you do that, or if
Speaker 1: you separate the hair and you see that dirt flee
Speaker 1: dirt they call it. That's like either dried blood or
Speaker 1: poop and a good sign that your dog or cat
Speaker 1: has fleas. Yeah, it's not flee a No flea. Eggs
Speaker 1: are clear, that's right, and smooth. So um. Fleas, like
Speaker 1: you said, suck blood. They eat what are called blood meals,
Speaker 1: which I just can't give past um. And they do
Speaker 1: so because they have specialized mouth parts, which is basically
Speaker 1: a combination of two saws on the side that puncture
Speaker 1: your skin. Those are called L A C I N
Speaker 1: I A. I was gonna say, listen you great um,
Speaker 1: and they form a saliva channel which will come into
Speaker 1: play later on. Yeah. Um. And then They also surround
Speaker 1: what's called the epipharynx, which is the needle that sucks
Speaker 1: the blood. That's right, and that is a stylet altogether. Um,
Speaker 1: it forms a stylet, which is the puncturing organ, and
Speaker 1: it basically it all just jabs into your skin and
Speaker 1: that epipharynx is working with um basically stomach pumps, yeah,
Speaker 1: to suck that stuff out. Yeah, which is pretty impressive
Speaker 1: because it requires a lot of suction to get that
Speaker 1: blood out. So again, pretty impressive with fleas jump far
Speaker 1: suck really hard that they do suck. Yeah. Alright, Right
Speaker 1: after this break, we're gonna talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that life cycle that we mentioned earlier. All right, Josh
Speaker 1: fleet life cycle. Yeah. Again, you can just look at
Speaker 1: Tracy Wilson be like, there's like other bugs. It's like
Speaker 1: a butterfly. It's still worth mentioning. So an adult has
Speaker 1: some eggs, and those eggs are totally smooth. They don't
Speaker 1: disappear smooth like the fleet itself. They are totally smooth.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why they're smooth is because
Speaker 1: the eggs are meant to fall off of the host,
Speaker 1: like the flea itself is having a blood meal. On
Speaker 1: your leg, laying some eggs, pooping, just doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff, right. Um, And when it lays its eggs,
Speaker 1: the eggs fall off and they fall into if you're
Speaker 1: in the house, carpet fibers deep in the carpet, cracks
Speaker 1: in your hardwood floor, man, that's the worst. Outside. They'll
Speaker 1: fall into the soil and they are just meant to
Speaker 1: be sequestered away. Yeah. They need in order to hatch
Speaker 1: and develop, they need warm, moist environment about seventy degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit sevent humidity, although they'll go as low as like
Speaker 1: forty five anything below that, and they're just not gonna hatch. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's why a good winter freeze is gonna help your
Speaker 1: fleet problem. Dry winter freeze, dry winter freeze. Um, your
Speaker 1: eggs are gonna hatch in about twelve days. And that
Speaker 1: twelve day span is one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: flee so maddening, because you can think you've killed all
Speaker 1: your fleas, and then there are tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: them that are gonna hatch twelve days later, right, and
Speaker 1: you go kill those and by the time you kill those,
Speaker 1: they've already laid eggs. And this cycle continues, which is why,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into it. You have to kill the
Speaker 1: fleas and their eggs to to take out a flea infestation.
Speaker 1: At the same time, it's challenging and so UM. The
Speaker 1: egg is sitting there in your hardvard floor, your carpet,
Speaker 1: or out in the soil, and after about twelve days,
Speaker 1: if the conditions are right, it'll hatch and it'll turn
Speaker 1: into a lot larva. And the larva goes through three
Speaker 1: in stars or cycles of development, stages of development, and
Speaker 1: they mold after each one, and after the third in
Speaker 1: star it says, I'm going back to my home in
Speaker 1: the cracks in the floor and spin me a nice
Speaker 1: cocoon and turn into a PUPA. That's right, And like
Speaker 1: we said, it's sort of like a butterfly. Um, an
Speaker 1: adult flea is eventually going to emerge from that cocoon.
Speaker 1: It's not nearly as pretty as an beautiful iridescent butterfly.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have blood meals as far as I know. Um,
Speaker 1: there's your next sci fi movie, blood meal butterfly. Look
Speaker 1: forward after Sharkonado three from this march UM about half
Speaker 1: in a in a population if fleas, about half of
Speaker 1: them or eggs, which is why we said they're so
Speaker 1: problematic to get rid of, and only about five percent
Speaker 1: reach adulthood. Um. And one reason is because females can
Speaker 1: only lay the eggs if they've had that blood meal.
Speaker 1: If they're starving, they will die before they reproduce. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's neat about them too, is when they're in
Speaker 1: the pupil stage and they're up in their cocoon and
Speaker 1: hanging out developing and everything, because they emerge from the
Speaker 1: cocoon is an adult. But while they're a pupa, they
Speaker 1: can tell through either vibrations and and or sensing body
Speaker 1: heat whether there's food nearby, like should I hatch? Because
Speaker 1: they right, because they feed on warm blooded animals, so
Speaker 1: they can tell them. They find these signals in the
Speaker 1: environment and if they if the signals are right, they'll
Speaker 1: come out of their cocoon. Uh and I think a
Speaker 1: week or something like that. If the signals aren't right,
Speaker 1: they can stay in their cocoon for up to a year,
Speaker 1: and they actually can will flash themselves. They roll around
Speaker 1: their cocoon and like debris and hair and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's why if you have
Speaker 1: like a vacation house and you've eradicated your fleas and
Speaker 1: then left for the winter. I guess you'd be there
Speaker 1: in the winter you've left for the spring, depending on
Speaker 1: how you I don't know how you do your vacation house. Um,
Speaker 1: but when you come back, you can like that could
Speaker 1: be the signal, hey, there are a hosts here now. Like.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you've been overrun by fleas that whole time.
Speaker 1: They've just been laying in wait for you to come back.
Speaker 1: And then you're back and there say we're here. The
Speaker 1: females can lay about twenty eggs at a time, or
Speaker 1: about five during a long life. I saw up to
Speaker 1: two thousand and another article than the say between Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again they won't they won't lay eggs if they
Speaker 1: haven't eaten no. Um. One of the they're cool things
Speaker 1: about the flea larva is that they actually don't eat
Speaker 1: blood meals. They eat just about everything else hair, dead,
Speaker 1: skin cells, um, flea droppings, nasty nasty things, um, just
Speaker 1: about anything that they'll find in the cracks and your floorboards,
Speaker 1: or in your carpet or out in the soil. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: But then once they hatch, they go after the blood meal.
Speaker 1: One of the other things that the flea larva eats
Speaker 1: our tapeworm eggs, which makes fleas again super nasty and
Speaker 1: dirty little creatures because once they eat those tapeworm eggs,
Speaker 1: they grow up to become fleas that have tapeworms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the tapeworm actually forms in the gut of the flea.
Speaker 1: It can be that tiny and uh, then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, your animal has tapeworms because they got bitten
Speaker 1: by a flea who injected that junk into your your
Speaker 1: dog or more likely you accidentally a to flee or
Speaker 1: a flea got into your food or the the your
Speaker 1: dog eight to flee, the tapeworm lodged itself and your
Speaker 1: dog's gut, the tapeworm eggs were excreted through your dog's
Speaker 1: rectum its bedding. You pet your dog, and then you
Speaker 1: touch your mouth and the tape worms crawl into your mouth.
Speaker 1: The tape worm makes and then now you're infected. So
Speaker 1: there's like eighty different ways that a tape worm. You
Speaker 1: can become infected with tapeworms just from fleas and specifically
Speaker 1: dog fleas are the ones that carry tapeworms. Most likely
Speaker 1: fleas on dogs or the dog. The dog flee um.
Speaker 1: So that's nasty. Here's some more nastiness for you. The
Speaker 1: reaction that you get when you get a fleet by
Speaker 1: or your dog gets um. You know, when your dog
Speaker 1: is scratching. That is from the junk and the saliva
Speaker 1: of the flea, specifically the ct E F one protein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it affects some people and animals more than others. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was really bad on my dog Charlie, Like she
Speaker 1: had the hair falling out in the bald spots and
Speaker 1: the hot patches. She was like, these fleas are driving
Speaker 1: me crazy. I know. It's terrible. Um. And the same
Speaker 1: thing can happen to people. You know, if you get
Speaker 1: a flea bite, you can see sometimes you have a
Speaker 1: few little bumps. Yeah, some people react to it worse
Speaker 1: than others, but everybody pretty much gets bumps. Those bumps
Speaker 1: make it even worse because you can scratch it, and
Speaker 1: some of those bumps will have bacteria flea excrement around them.
Speaker 1: When you go to scratch them, you can break the
Speaker 1: skin and actually move those flea excrement that's dirty is
Speaker 1: all get out into your newly open break in the skin,
Speaker 1: and you get all sorts of nasty infections from that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can also get a murine typhus UH in the
Speaker 1: southern and southwestern parts here where we live. UM that
Speaker 1: is caused by the bacteria Rickettsia type and UH mainly
Speaker 1: on the cat flee in the oriental rat flee. But
Speaker 1: that's one of the things you can get when you
Speaker 1: when the flea is defecating while they're eating, you scratch
Speaker 1: and you get that infected waste in the scratch or
Speaker 1: you know, if you've broken your skin, so you get
Speaker 1: typhus from it from that you scratch in your skin.
Speaker 1: And then of course we talked about the plague, which
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. The plague bacteria actually infects the flea
Speaker 1: itself and it develops this film in the flea's mid gut.
Speaker 1: So when the flea goes to eat a blood meal,
Speaker 1: it can't digest all the way, so then it goes
Speaker 1: to feast on the next person and when it punctures
Speaker 1: your skin, it actually barfs up the undigested blood meal
Speaker 1: that's now infected with the plague into your skin. Now
Speaker 1: you have the plague. Man, when you hear words like
Speaker 1: mid gut and blood meal and mouthparts like barf is
Speaker 1: the least offensive of all those. That sounds cute. So, um,
Speaker 1: we can understand why everyone wants to get rid of fleas,
Speaker 1: but some people learn to love fleas, especially in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and we'll talk about those people and their
Speaker 1: flee circuses right after this. All right, Josh, you mentioned
Speaker 1: flee circuses. Um. I always thought that flee circuses were
Speaker 1: just fake, and that they use magnets and other little
Speaker 1: things to like move the bicycle and that can be
Speaker 1: a flee circus. Those are called, I believe, illusory flee circuses. No,
Speaker 1: they have a name humbug flee circuses. But there were,
Speaker 1: and I guess still are in some places, flee circuses
Speaker 1: that actually attached little leashes and chains to fleas and
Speaker 1: they do things, they pull things around. Yeah, because here's
Speaker 1: another astounding thing about fleas. They can lift up to
Speaker 1: sixty times their body weight, so they're enormously strong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty times. Like think about it, man, Like imagine lifting
Speaker 1: sixty times your body weight. You'd be crushed. It's like
Speaker 1: that's a huge rock to you. You know, it's a boulder.
Speaker 1: It's a boulder. So fleas can lift their equivalent of boulders.
Speaker 1: And these boulders, especially in the nineteenth century, but starting
Speaker 1: about in the sixteen hundreds came in the form of
Speaker 1: things like chariots, coaches, hearses, just things that like say,
Speaker 1: a horse would draw, but in miniature. Yeah, And apparently
Speaker 1: before that, even in the late fifteen hundreds, a guy
Speaker 1: named Mark Scalliot in eight he was a watchmaker, and
Speaker 1: apparently watchmakers were the first dudes who had the idea
Speaker 1: to attach a flea to a chain, and in fIF
Speaker 1: did so. It was a lot consisting of eleven different
Speaker 1: pieces of steel, iron, and brass, which together with the
Speaker 1: key belonging to it, weighed only one grain. Whatever one
Speaker 1: grain was, It's like a pound and a half. Let's
Speaker 1: no no way. So this is the late yeah, and
Speaker 1: he was the first guy who was like, hey, this
Speaker 1: little flee can actually carry something, right, So that call
Speaker 1: it on. But apparently the the paying public didn't catch
Speaker 1: onto what was really going on, which was these guys
Speaker 1: had figured out how to actually train fleas. One of
Speaker 1: the thing first things you have to teach them is
Speaker 1: to not jump, and apparently you train them not to
Speaker 1: jump by keeping him in a sealed container. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say about beating them by like holding their parents hostage. Um,
Speaker 1: you keep them in a jar, I guess the sea
Speaker 1: through jar, so they can see their parents on the
Speaker 1: other side are being held hostage. But they jump and
Speaker 1: jump and they get nowhere, and they learned jumping is futile,
Speaker 1: so the very shallow something I guess yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And then after they learned to jump, you tie them
Speaker 1: up to this harness, this very tiny harness, and then
Speaker 1: they live in the harness for the rest of their lives,
Speaker 1: which no, it's about three months. But um, so let's
Speaker 1: say flee lives a year. The first six months it
Speaker 1: has to mature to about the age where it can
Speaker 1: learn and it's big enough to put in the harness.
Speaker 1: You spend three months training it, and then it has
Speaker 1: a performing life of three months where it's basically just
Speaker 1: living in this harness, carrying chariots around for people's entertainment.
Speaker 1: There are probably people out there feeling bad about the flee, yeah,
Speaker 1: but don't forget the plague and flee instrument. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. It is kind of sad to an extent um.
Speaker 1: But in the six d apparently the public thought that uh,
Speaker 1: the fleas the flee circus trainers were sorcerers. That was
Speaker 1: a big thing because that explains it actually just as well. Well,
Speaker 1: they really caught on in places like october Fest in Germany.
Speaker 1: They loved it. They still do. I saw a video
Speaker 1: of a dude in Germany like today showing his flee
Speaker 1: circus off. It seems like very German thing to do,
Speaker 1: you know, be trying to fleece, to pull the things.
Speaker 1: Uh Andy Kaufman, sure, Um County Island and the Long
Speaker 1: Beach in California and New York City, Um, places like Blackpool, England.
Speaker 1: Wherever there were circuses and freak shows and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you you might find a flee circus going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a dude named Andy Clark who's got one
Speaker 1: going now. He's he's got his hands on nineteenth century
Speaker 1: manual's magazine articles reviews of the real flee circuses, and
Speaker 1: he's um recreating on my guess. But we'd be remiss
Speaker 1: to not mention Albert totally. Isn't that his name? Who? El?
Speaker 1: Albert Tolato? Who was he? He was like the flee
Speaker 1: circus guy, just the legend in the field. He was
Speaker 1: the chief flee circus dude. He go over in his house,
Speaker 1: he's got like fleas doing the dishes and pretty much
Speaker 1: he's cleaning up after him. Uh so chuck flee circus
Speaker 1: kind of hard to do. Most people just want to
Speaker 1: get rid of fleace, so there's some waste. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, I've had two major infestations, one in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles where UM I could not find. Here's my advice,
Speaker 1: this is off script. If you want to get rid
Speaker 1: of your fleas, try and find the source area, find
Speaker 1: the head fleet. Find the head fleet and take a meeting. UM,
Speaker 1: work out a negotiation between the two of you, and
Speaker 1: it should work out. No chariots. So find find your
Speaker 1: source and and l A. I could not find my source.
Speaker 1: That was driving me crazy. And finally I was going
Speaker 1: I was outside. I thought, let me go in the
Speaker 1: yard and we had this uh sort of squirrel. Now
Speaker 1: it was a garage on the side of the house
Speaker 1: the dead squirrel and filled the dead squirrels and that
Speaker 1: was it. Um. And on the other side of the garage,
Speaker 1: it was like two ft of space about fifteen ft
Speaker 1: long between that and the fence. And that's just the
Speaker 1: place where nothing ever went, you know, and except the dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except the dogs. And I was walking over there, and
Speaker 1: what I do is I walk around the yard barefoot
Speaker 1: if I'm looking outside, because yeah, that's the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look down and see if they jump on you.
Speaker 1: And I walked around the corner to this thing, dude,
Speaker 1: and in five seconds I had probably a thousand fleas
Speaker 1: just crawling all over me. Was it sandy over there
Speaker 1: at all? It's kind of dirty and it was dank
Speaker 1: and dark? Yeah, yeah, just not like like I said,
Speaker 1: it was not well traveled. And dude, I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is it. And I did the thing
Speaker 1: I don't normally do, which has get a lot of
Speaker 1: chemicals and sprayed all over it. Did you set it
Speaker 1: on fire? Set it on fire and it up and
Speaker 1: pooped on it? And that did it. Here's some of
Speaker 1: my excrement fleas. And then I had a situation here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta where I actually got it, had a guy
Speaker 1: come out and spray um nematodes um instead of chemicals.
Speaker 1: You can apparently spray your basement and house and floorboards
Speaker 1: with nematodes. Those are flatworms, right, yeah, they're living things
Speaker 1: apparently that I guess. I would guess you have no idea,
Speaker 1: but that that worked. UM and I also use what
Speaker 1: your overrun with nematodes. Now they were great. They left
Speaker 1: sprinkle a little on your coffee. So there's some those
Speaker 1: chemicals you mentioned, there's some pretty cool UM chemicals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some topical treatments that you can use on your animals,
Speaker 1: which they say they're safe. I try to avoid them
Speaker 1: just because I don't know. I just don't think that
Speaker 1: chemicals that seep into the skin of your animal is
Speaker 1: ever good. No, I mean it's a great you make
Speaker 1: a good point, you know, Yeah, which I been forced
Speaker 1: to use them, which I hate. But if you could
Speaker 1: control the fleas in the environment, you could conceivably not
Speaker 1: have to use the chemicals on that. That's what the
Speaker 1: nematode guy said. He's like, I don't ever use that stuff.
Speaker 1: He said, you stop it before it starts. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: good for you. You own you've got tons of nematodes
Speaker 1: in that can. You've got a fancy pants dog. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to those topical things UM and I,
Speaker 1: g r s and set growth regulators, my favorite is
Speaker 1: the kitan synthesis inhibitor. Those that's mean it basically creates
Speaker 1: mutant fleet soft fleas that never grow their exo skeleton right,
Speaker 1: which means they never developed fully, which means their toasts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which means they can be killed by dog scratches and
Speaker 1: bites and things. Uh. Those I g rs keep that
Speaker 1: I mentioned keep fleas from hatching, uh because they mimic
Speaker 1: flee hormones. Uh. And some of these things will kill
Speaker 1: just the eggs, some kill adult fleas, some kill both.
Speaker 1: You pretty much want something that kills it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to get the worst thing you can get
Speaker 1: for the flea. So if you do have an infestation,
Speaker 1: Tracy Wilson recommends some steps to take all at the
Speaker 1: same time. You don't want to do one or the other. Um,
Speaker 1: you want to treat your pets and the dank area
Speaker 1: between your garage and the fence at the same time.
Speaker 1: You want to wash all of your pets clothing, all
Speaker 1: of their their betting being all that stuff. You want
Speaker 1: to wash it like five million times in the hottest water.
Speaker 1: You can probably with bleach if you can if you
Speaker 1: can find it, which it's not that hard to go
Speaker 1: to the store. Um, you want to bathe your pet.
Speaker 1: You want to use a fleet home yeah. Uh, you
Speaker 1: want to get a vacuum a lot, a lot, like
Speaker 1: every day. Really, she says, at least every other day.
Speaker 1: Is that what you said, Well, I mean every day
Speaker 1: if you really want to Yeah, I would recommend twice
Speaker 1: a day. Yeah, and not don't just vacuum and then
Speaker 1: put it in the closet. If it's a canister or bag,
Speaker 1: you want to empty that immediately outside. It's nice, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you want to chase squirrels away. Yeah. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stupid home remedies that say they work
Speaker 1: that don't. Um brewers, yeast, garlic, vitamin supplements, ultrasonic collars,
Speaker 1: flea collars, No, that stuff really works, trust me. Chance.
Speaker 1: I got this one more thing on sand fleas. Did
Speaker 1: you read this and talk about sand fleas um are
Speaker 1: found in tropical areas another in Florida, but mentioned the Caribbean, Well,
Speaker 1: the South American South Africa. I think that they were
Speaker 1: native to the Caribbean, I'm sorry, sub Saharan Africa, and
Speaker 1: they were taken got to Africa by the in the
Speaker 1: slave trade. Actually, so that's how they spread, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is just yeah. So if you've ever heard of chicos
Speaker 1: or chiggers or jiggers, or niguas or peak quas or beachops.
Speaker 1: These are all names for the sand flea. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this lady was studying them, and she said, she's a
Speaker 1: PhD student named Marlene. Uh named Marlene, and she was
Speaker 1: studying ways to prevent um tangy assis infection in Madagascar,
Speaker 1: which is spread by fleas, the sand fleas. And she said,
Speaker 1: how are these things reproducing? And she said, look, I've
Speaker 1: got a flea and they host in the body. These
Speaker 1: are different kinds of fleas actually root and into your
Speaker 1: under your skin and live there forever. Yeah, So it's disgusting. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not just to extract them, right, it's not just
Speaker 1: disgusting too. Once they move in and live there, and
Speaker 1: they'll actually they'll they'll move in as groups often um
Speaker 1: they spend the rest of their life there. Over time,
Speaker 1: walking becomes painful, Eventually walking becomes impossible, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, there goes your livelihood. So apparently the this
Speaker 1: article mentions that affects the poors to the poor. So,
Speaker 1: especially in Sub Saharan Africa, it's a real problem among
Speaker 1: um the poverty stricken areas because you get a sand
Speaker 1: flea in your foot, and that's it your toast. A
Speaker 1: year later, pretty much so, she noticed that she had
Speaker 1: one between her toes, and she said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let me just let it burrow and see what happens.
Speaker 1: And she did, and it lived a lot longer than usual,
Speaker 1: uh two months, and she said it was still regularly
Speaker 1: expelling liquid from its abdomen, but she never got any eggs.
Speaker 1: And the reason uh this happened, she learned, and they
Speaker 1: now have a new theory cooking is because she put
Speaker 1: a sock and a shoe over it and didn't let
Speaker 1: any other fleas in there. So basically this flee never
Speaker 1: had sex and so never laid eggs. And what they
Speaker 1: theorize now is that these female fleas can basically lay
Speaker 1: there in a waiting state for longer than they should
Speaker 1: ever be able to live, waiting for a male flee
Speaker 1: to come around and fertilize the mature eggs. Science. Science,
Speaker 1: So now they think basically that this is the deal,
Speaker 1: and they don't know quite how that's going to help
Speaker 1: them with fighting it, but they do know that it
Speaker 1: takes two to tango, for sure, in your foot, in
Speaker 1: your foot having sex under your skin. And speaking of
Speaker 1: sex and fleas, we have to mention the Autobiography of
Speaker 1: a Flea, which was an anonymous erotica book written in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, like I think the eighteen eighties is
Speaker 1: huge in London. Um, and it is about a flee
Speaker 1: that that tells the tale of a girl it's attached
Speaker 1: to who becomes the sex toy of a bunch of priests.
Speaker 1: What autobiography of a flee? Uh? And uh, I guess
Speaker 1: that's it. You've got anything that can top the Autobiography
Speaker 1: of a Flee definitely not. Fan fiction is the ultimate.
Speaker 1: So uh. If you want to learn more about fleas,
Speaker 1: you can type the word fleas into the search bar
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Since I said search parts,
Speaker 1: time for listener medal. Uh spoiler alert on this people.
Speaker 1: That says to do with movies that you may have
Speaker 1: seen to stop the podcast now. That is so nice
Speaker 1: if you don't want to be spoiled about Birdman in particular,
Speaker 1: which we've already talked about. Okay, guys, for the last years,
Speaker 1: I've cringed and groaned every time you make an error
Speaker 1: or sweeping statement about films. Chuck, you discussed gailmo Guillermo
Speaker 1: del Paro as the director of The Orphanage, and he
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the making out that film.
Speaker 1: I'm misspoke. It's The Devil's Backbone, which was about an orphanage.
Speaker 1: Didn't he wasn't also directed by a Latin America No,
Speaker 1: but I was thinking of the Devil's Backbone, So he's right, Chuck.
Speaker 1: You also stated once that James Cameron has not made
Speaker 1: any good film since The Terminator, to ignoring the fantastic
Speaker 1: blend of comedy in action that his true lies. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty good. I didn't like it. That's why
Speaker 1: I didn't mention it. Um. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: some movies that change milk filmmaking at strong suspicion, that
Speaker 1: would be my first listener mail. So Josh's criticisms a Birdman.
Speaker 1: He he suggested first that the scene where Riggan confronts
Speaker 1: the critic represents the director's pulpitting to the critics. Um,
Speaker 1: he says, the critics who have attacked him, And he
Speaker 1: says that can't be right because the guys in universal
Speaker 1: praise for his movies. I'm sure he's been criticized potentially
Speaker 1: unfairly in the past that's what I think. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the ending of Birdman, Josh, it is heavily implied, and
Speaker 1: we had a bunch of people say to this, actually, Uh,
Speaker 1: it is heavily implied earlier in the film that the
Speaker 1: type of psychosis he suffers from his daughter also shares
Speaker 1: the moment when he returns to the room to find
Speaker 1: she returns to find that her father has gone out
Speaker 1: the window. We hear sirens indicating that he has in
Speaker 1: fact jumped to his death in reality, but she looks
Speaker 1: out the window and up to the sky, seeing a
Speaker 1: hallucinatory image. Um, he will now live on for her
Speaker 1: as Birdman and no longer her never their father. Her
Speaker 1: reaction is also strongly indicative of this, as her face
Speaker 1: does not reflect that of a sane person seeing a
Speaker 1: human flying through the air, but instead of blissful ignorance.
Speaker 1: So I've heard that theory that she's she's you know,
Speaker 1: he did jump to her death and she's just like
Speaker 1: suffers a psychotic breakdown, or that he actually did kill
Speaker 1: himself on stage, and all of that last stuff is
Speaker 1: not reality. Whose reality is it? I don't know who cares? Uh.
Speaker 1: He also takes us to task on eight and a
Speaker 1: half being the birth of surreal cinema because that goes
Speaker 1: to own Chin and delou F, and that Citizen Kane
Speaker 1: was a genesis of dark lighting. Not so, because fil
Speaker 1: noir goes all the way back to the Cabinet of
Speaker 1: Dr Calla, Gharry and m this guy's fun to watch
Speaker 1: movies with and dude, this is the tame version he was.
Speaker 1: Actually it was funny because he was kind of rude,
Speaker 1: but then he was like, I love you guys, so
Speaker 1: I think he want to wear your skin. I think
Speaker 1: he was just being cheeky. Uh and also too, by
Speaker 1: the way, dialing for murder, that was anatomy of a
Speaker 1: murder that you were thinking of? From Auto premature I
Speaker 1: looked for maybe not, but there was a movie called
Speaker 1: Anatomy of a Murder by dial M. Right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that's what you said, and I said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and then you kept talking and I looked it up
Speaker 1: and apparently some people didn't hear me correct and say, yes,
Speaker 1: you were right about Hitchcock. I guess it was anatomy
Speaker 1: of a murder I was thinking of. Or there was
Speaker 1: one that was just called M that was also well
Speaker 1: m one and it was the first talkie to use
Speaker 1: m R as a wilder release, wide wide release, and
Speaker 1: that was premature, nor this correct. Uh, he said, this
Speaker 1: email has already exceeded the link that moderate sanity would allow,
Speaker 1: and it was even longer. And disagree, sir, You're clearly
Speaker 1: crazy from the first sentence. I'm just kidding. That is
Speaker 1: Travis Dukelo and he's a good guy. He just he's
Speaker 1: a film buff and took it's the task. Thanks a
Speaker 1: lot of Travis. It wasn't too bad. We've survived worse,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. If you want to correct us or
Speaker 1: throw in your two cents or whatever, because film appreciation,
Speaker 1: I don't care what you say is subjective. True. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
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Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.