8+ Bugs That Look Like Fleas! [Ticks, Bed Bugs, and Carpet Beetles!]
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Fleas are tiny, wingless insects and infamous bloodsuckers belonging to the order of true bugs (Hemiptera). There are around 2,500 species of fleas in the world.
Terrifying. Isn’t it?
Luckily, only a few species are significant for human and pet health.
But, the woes do not end there. Plenty of insects and arachnids look like fleas and may fuel our parasitic phobia. And telling them apart from one another is nearly impossible. Unless you’re bug geeks like we are, of course.
The aim of this article is to equip you not only to recognize fleas but to differentiate them from other similar – and largely harmless – fellow insects.
Let’s… bite in.
Shall we?
Which Bugs Look Like Fleas?
Some of the most familiar bugs that look like fleas are flea beetles, flour beetles, bed bugs, snow fleas, aphids, lice, deer ticks, and carpet beetles. Identifying these insects and arachnids is also trickier than it seems – and confusing them is easy.
So – we’re about to classify and identify them in more detail.
We’ll also discuss several flea varieties you may encounter on the homestead, farm, and ranch.
Sound good?
4 Common Flea Species
As I said in the beginning, there is no need to burden yourself with the fact there are a couple of thousand flea species out there.
The fleas are diverse because many are highly specialized and adapted to a particular host.
In the domestic realm, only a few species of fleas are generalists that feed on pet blood and human blood.
1. Cat Flea (Ctenocephalides felis)
The most common flea in the world, found on all domestic animals – not only cats (names can sometimes be confusing, right?). Rarely a plague vector, but they transmit murine typhus, cat scratch disease (CSD), and tapeworms.
2. Dog Flea (Ctenocephalides canis)
To the naked eye, the Dog flea looks the same as the Cat flea, and it is also not a dog specialist. It transmits a commondog tapeworm, Dipylidium caninum.
3. Oriental Rat Flea (Xenopsylla cheopis)
The infamous force behind the Black Death and still the main global spreader of the plague bacteria. (Yersinia pestis). It commonly lives on rodents but can survive on any warm-blooded animal.
4. Ground Squirrel Flea (Oropsylla Montana)
Ground squirrel fleas, as you may guess, are found on squirrels. This flea species is responsible for recent plague cases in the US.
How Do I Identify Fleas?
If you exclude the microscopic features, the outer differences between these fleas are minimal.
That is why when learning to identify, it’s best to look at all flea’s usual features – some quite typical.
- Flea color ranges from dull orange or reddish-brown to a deep dark brown (nearly black at a glance). No matter what the hue, fleas always appear dark or drab.
- The size of a flea is 1.5-3 mm. (One and a half to three millimeters.)
- Fleas have laterally flattened bodies – that is, flattened side-to-side. Contrastingly, most insects have rounded or dorsoventrally (top-to-bottom) flat bodies.
- The flea’s body is very hard. The outer shell hardness and side-to-side compression make fleas very difficult to crush.
- Fleas have long claws on the end of their feet (tarsi); however, these are unnoticeable to the naked eye.
- Flea hind legs adapted to jumping. The famous flea jump is its main means of escape and finding a new host, but they don’t exclusively jump. Fleas tend to crawl and snuggle as deep as possible when they’re on the animal fur.
Are Fleas Visible to the Human Eye?
Fleas are visible to the human eye. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy to see. They tend to burrow under the hair or the feathers and venture out only when necessary. Also, the drab or dark color helps fleas blend with the animal fur.
Can You See Fleas Crawling?
Yes, you can see fleas when crawling. But you can hardly see a flea right while it’s jumping. Even if you do – there’s not much you can do to catch it mid-air.
The best way to spot and remove fleas is to find them while crawling. To do that, look at your pet’s belly – the contrast between the (presumably) light, pinkish skin, and the dark flea body will give them away.
8 Bugs Look Like Fleas – The List
Flea bodies are heavily modified via evolution to suit their renegade bloodsucking lifestyle. If you had an uncanny magnifying vision superpower, you could never mistake it for another insect or arthropod.
However, to human eyes, some bugs look superficially similar to fleas due to color, size, how they move, or the fact that they dwell around animals.
Let’s study the list of insects and other arthropods you can easily confuse with fleas.
The ordering of flea-like insect species is logical – from the most likely to be mistaken with fleas at the top to the less likely doubles towards the end.
1. Flea Beetles
The name says it all. If you asked me what the easiest to confuse with fleas is, I would say Flea beetles – at least from afar.
Flea beetles are around the same size as adult fleas and jump nearly identically.
However, you will rarely find flea beetles indoors – they feed on plants, including many vegetables, causing significant damage to crops. That means you will likely encounter them in a garden or a field and not in your home (they can arrive with flowers or produce, though).
Upon closer inspection, you’ll see that the flea beetles differ from fleas. Their bodies are rounded instead of flattened. The color can be black, green, or bronze, but always with a metallic sheen.
Most importantly, flea beetles want nothing to do with you or your pets. However, if you’re broccoli – watch out!
2. Flour Beetles
Check out these markedly similar species – the rust-red flour beetle (named for its color) and the confused flour beetle (named for getting confused with the former species – what a plot twist!).
Both are infamous for feeding on flour and cereal products. They also dine upon any other dried food source – including pet food.
The flour beetles have small (3-4 mm) and elongated bodies. Thus, their color, size, and shape can get them confused for fleas.
Location in the home can also be confusing (no pun intended). Flour beetles are not found only in food packaging but often stick around clutter or dust-filled corners under or behind furniture.
Because they don’t mind feeding on waste such as dandruff and food crumbles, they can also be found in beds and around carpets. The fondness for dried pet food may land them near your pet, causing panic.
Here is how to tell a flour beetle apart from a flea.
- Flour beetles are elongated but cylindrical; also, they do not jump.
- Excluding their pest-ish feeding habits, these beetles are harmless and do not bite nor sting.
3. Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are confused with fleas by their looks and effect on us.
As you may know, bedbugs hang around our sleeping places – usually the namesake beds – and suck human blood while we sleep. They can affect warm-blooded pets in the same way.
After a near-eradication in most parts of the developed world, a bedbug infestation is once again a real possibility.
Bed Bugs vs. Fleas – Difference Between Bed Bugs and Fleas
Bed bugs and fleas are cousins – both are Hemiptera or True bugs. One of the main features of this order is mouthparts for piercing and sucking.
While most true bugs use their needle-like mouth structure for sucking plant juices, unlucky for us, evolution had other plans for bed bugs, fleas, and lice. They use their hypodermic straws to get blood meals.
Like fleas, bedbug bites are very itchy and unpleasant. Their bites also appear in clusters. Luckily, they are not known to be disease carriers.
Fleas and bed bugs have small bodies, with bed bugs being slightly larger (4-7 mm) and flattened top to bottom rather than side-to-side. Also, bed bugs do not jump.
Since both bugs are tiny and hard to see, sometimes you’ll have to identify the cause of the bloodsucker infestation by bites.
There are some differences between flea and bedbug bites. For example, bed bugs rarely go for the legs and prefer the upper body parts, such as the arms, neck, and torso, while flea bites on the legs are common.
4. Snow Fleas or Springtails
Snow Fleas or Springtails are tiny insect-like creatures that usually hide in damp places. You’ll commonly encounter them in the home under potted plants and in bathrooms. They can also be found in gardens – in moist leaf litter or on dead plants.
In early spring, springtails sometimes aggregate on the top of the remaining snow cover and jump around. That is why they sometimes get labeled as snow fleas.
You could think these slow, peaceful, and harmless arthropods are fleas for one reason. They can jump! The namesake catapult-like structure on the rear end allows the tiny bug to spring into the air.
On the other hand, fleas use their strong hind legs for jumping – but it’s not a difference you can observe with the naked eye.
If you’ve wondered, “Do I have springtails or fleas,” here’s how you solve the dilemma.
- Springtails or snow fleas look smaller and more delicate than regular fleas.
- Although many snow fleas have dull colors, fleas tend to be much darker.
- When not jumping, snow fleas are slow-moving.
- You may find snow fleas under an outdoor water bowl or similar damp “under” place. However, you won’t find them on animal fur (too warm and dry).
- Unlike regular fleas, snow fleas are very tender; you can accidentally kill snow fleas just by a mere touch. Genuine fleas are much harder to squash – even when you intend to!
Read More!
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- Does Smoke Keep Mosquitoes Away? What About Fire? Or Essential Oils?
5. Aphids
Aphids or plant lice are tiny cousins of fleas (true bugs again) that suck on plant juices.
There are over 4,000 species of aphids. And not all are potential flea look-alikes. There is no significant chance you’ll ever mistake a green or an orange aphid for a flea.
However, with black and other dark aphids, it can happen.
On plants, aphids dwell in clusters. The wingless females give birth to countless babies that look like tiny adults. Once the branch or a leaf becomes overcrowded, the aphid nymphs turn into winged adults and fly away individually to find a new plant host.
People usually mistake single adult aphids for fleas because they are small and dark. All similarities stop there – aphids are slow mowing, do not jump, and dwell on pets only by accident. Also, aphids have soft bodies that are easy to squash.
6. Lice
Lice are a diverse group of external parasitic insects that suck blood and reproduce on humans and other mammals. Most are host-specific and depend on a particular species for survival.
On occasion, people mistake lice bites for flea bites. However, unlike fleas that opportunistically bite but don’t colonize human skin, lice won’t just go away. If it’s the kind that targets humans, if it lands on you – it’s there to stay.
Three types of lice target humans. And various others target domestic animals. The infestation with lice is called pediculosis.
- The head louse – the most common human louse that lives, feeds, and lays eggs exclusively on the human scalp (lucky us, so honored!). It is specialized to move through the hair like a tiny Tarzan via tiny pinching claws on its legs. Head lice are thinner and smaller than fleas. Also, they do not jump (although they’re said to take leaps of faith to find a new host). Fortunately, the head louse is not known to be a disease vector.
- Body louse – does the same things as a head louse, only on your body. Also, the appearance is nearly identical, but because the bites are on the body, they can be confused with flea bites. In poverty or war-stricken areas, body louse transmits diseases to humans, including typhus, trench fever, and relapsing fever. Fortunately, this is rare in most of the world – and so are the body lice.
- Pubic louse – Also colloquially known as “crabs,” the name says it all. These lice call our private parts their home and cause infamously itchy skin where the sun doesn’t shine in infested people. As for the looks, these lice have smaller and stockier bodies.
7. Ticks
Ticks are external parasites of mammals. They’re not insects, but a type of arachnid, meaning they’re more related to mites and spiders.
It would be tremendously hard to mistake an adult tick for a flea. An average adult dog tick is the size of an apple seed. However, many homesteaders don’t know that ticks go through three life stages. And that tick nymphs are tiny – like poppy seeds (or fleas).
If you see a tiny black dot crawling on your pet, you’ll know it’s a tick if it’s slow-moving and doesn’t jump or try to run away from you. Ticks do not rely on escaping. Instead, they focus on staying stealthy until they latch onto their host.
Also, fleas never latch onto the skin. But they bite, suck, and shortly go elsewhere to continue.
8. Carpet beetles
Carpet beetles go by the Mi casa tu casa notion – or rather, the other way around. They are our frequent roommates because they feed on keratin – the stuff that hair and dead skin make up. All our wooly carpets, skin and hair debris from our and our pets’ bodies, dead bugs, and other dry organic matter are a feast for carpet beetles.
Due to the dark body and small size, a panicky eye can mistake a carpet beetle for a flea or bed bug, especially around pet spots. Also, their larvae are small, brownish, and hairy, and their weird look can stir commotion.
Still, when you look closely, you’ll realize that carpet beetles have nothing in common with fleas. They have an oval-shaped body, are more significant than fleas, do not jump, and move moderately slowly. Although they can damage our household items and clothes, carpet beetles are harmless to our bodies.
Two More Insects That Look Like Fleas
Other insects we encounter inside or near our homes can resemble fleas at a glance.
- Cockroach Nymphs. Small, dull orange or brown, and fast. If a person doesn’t know roaches have a larval stage and expects only the big ones, this may stir fear of fleas.
- Adult Fungus Gnats. Tiny, black, elongated flies love dwelling around humid places such as plant pots. Although they usually fly, they can make jumpy movements, mistaking them for fleas. Fungus gnat larvae live in the soil. So they’re likely excluded from the flea-look-alike competition.
Bugs That Look Like Fleas – FAQs
Here is a small list of FAQs about bugs that look like fleas.
Yes! Insects that like to crawl on our skin are the ones that make our skin crawl the most, right? (I’ll give you a moment or two to figure that sentence out).
And if they tend to pierce our skin when sucking blood – that’s even more dreadful.
Flea infestation will significantly impact your life through frustration caused by bites and the difficulty of getting rid of fleas once they claim their ground.
You could say that we are a squeamish kind by nature and should toughen up, but parasitic insects are more than a nuisance – besides causing discomfort, they can transmit diseases and cause allergic reactions.
Fleas are excellent bacterial hosts and vectors, passing the bacteria via their blood meals. The deadliest outbreaks in history – the bubonic plague, spotted fevers, and typhus fevers, all have infected fleas as an intermediary between humans and rats.
There is no need to panic. Since the invention of antibiotics, these once-grave diseases can be treated and flea-to-human transmissions are rare. Still, the potential shouldn’t be completely ignored, especially because we still don’t fully understand how all the bacteria carried by fleas translate into illness in pets and humans.
If you’re a survivor of a recent flea infestation, watch out for any signs of infection.
Regarding pets, fleas are an intermediary host to at least three species of tapeworms – the long flat worms that snuggle inside mammalian bowels and soak in the food. The tapeworm uses the flea to enter the dog’s and cat’s bloodstreams. Humans are affected only in freak accident cases when a flea is swallowed (usually by a kid).
Another pet-related problem is flea saliva can cause flea allergy dermatitis – nasty allergic reactions. These exist on the skin of cats and dogs alike.
Is It Bad to Live With the Other Insects Listed Here?
In short – no. Excluding other external parasites (lice, bedbugs, and ticks), most of the insects listed here won’t do any harm other than perhaps venturing out into your flour stash (and making babies there, whoops).
We hope our guide helped you readily identify unknown flea look-a-likes that cross your path.
Thanks again for reading.
And have a great day!