Home Remedy for Fleas

Fleas are the most annoying and troublesome insects for both humans and their pets. While we can use various products to rid ourselves of fleas, old-fashioned, preventative home remedies relieve us of ever having to have them in the first place.

Flea Control

Fleas are small insects that are capable of giving humans and their pets big troubles with a little stab of their proboscis. There are over 2,400 species of fleas worldwide, but fortunately, there are just four or five species of fleas that are a threat to humans. The most commonly found species in America is the cat flea, which feeds on cats and dogs, as well as humans.

Flea is the common name for insects of the order Siphonaptera which are wingless insects with mouthparts adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood. Fleas are external parasites, living by hematophagy off the blood of mammals (including humans) and birds.

In the past, it was most commonly supposed that fleas had evolved from the flies (Diptera), based on similarities of the larvae. (Some authorities use the name Aphaniptera because it is older, but names above family rank need not follow the ICZN rules of priority, so most taxonomists use the more familiar name). Genetic and morphological evidence indicates that they are descendants of the Scorpionfly family Boreidae, which are also flightless; accordingly it is possible that they will eventually be reclassified as a suborder within the Mecoptera. In any case, all these groups seem to represent a clade of closely related insect lineages, for which the names Mecopteroidea and Antliophora have been proposed.