A question often asked when insect activity is seen in the home is if it is fleas vs. bed bugs. The issue though is, both appear similar and are almost impossible to tell apart except for a few features.
Difference between fleas and bed bugs?
Bedbugs
- They are nocturnal creatures and are rarely seen around the house except when they are tunneling their way through your mattress or box spring.
- Bedbugs are flat and shaped like a seed. They are reddish in color and the adult approximately grows to 5mm.
- Bedbugs cannot jump or fly, they crawl.
- They have not been confirmed to transmit diseases to humans through their bites.
- They can survive for over a year without feeding
- They lay about 200 eggs throughout their lifetime which is about a year.
- Bed bugs prefer to feed exclusively on humans.
Fleas
- Adult fleas grow to 3.3mm, approximately.
- They are nocturnal creatures also, but they are not normally seen around mattresses, no. They are found clinging and feeding on your pets.
- Fleas are oval-shaped and brownish in color.
- They can lay over 200 eggs every week and require a blood meal before they can reproduce.
- Fleas commonly use animals as hosts because they are furrier.
- These parasites cannot survive without a proper host longer than fourteen days.
- They cannot fly but can jump high due to their well-adapted strong hind legs.
- Infected fleas have been known to transmit a range of diseases to humans such as Bartonellosis also known as cat scratch disease, Marine Typhus and Black plague.
How to decipher bites
Insects generally leave reddish bite marks on whoever they attack, however it is somewhat difficult to decipher which insect did the biting. Pets and children are the first you inspect for signs of infestation, for children, check their lower legs and your pets around their rump or tails.
If there are many bite marks on them, these are a few pointers you can use to identify which insect bites they are suffering from;
- Some people show allergic reactions to bed bug bites, the spot appears elevated from the skin, flat and reddish in color.
- Flea bumps get swollen almost immediately after feeding. Then the itch sets in, persistently. Blisters may develop if the itch is not soothed after two days.
- Flea bites appear like a cluster of mosquito bites, they are reddish too but with a darker center caused when a flea punctures the skin to feed.
- Fleas need a fresh blood meal to reproduce; they also need a host to feed on the instant they break out of their cocoon. This means that fleas feed many times a day while Bed bugs survive on one meal, every ten days, not as frequent as a flea.
- Flea bites are noticed almost the instant they occur but bed bug bites take at least a week to surface. The itch builds up after the anesthetic in their saliva wears off the skin.