Continued
At one time the Chinese and others used flea traps made of ivory or bamboo which were gently warmed and placed between the sheets before going to bed, the idea being that the fleas would crawl into the traps and could then be easily killed. In the 14th - 16th centuries ladies wore fur collars, now known as flea cravats (see below), which were supposed to catch fleas, which could then be shaken out. Nowadays when one acquires a human flea, it is usually as a result of a visit to a pigsty. The human flea also thrives on pigs and can also be found on fox and badger.

General Description of Adults: Fleas are small, black to brownish-black insects, with complete metamorphosis. They are wingless, having lost their wings in the course of their evolutionary development. Adult fleas are 1 to 4 mm long, depending on the species, and are laterally compressed. They have stout, spiny legs, adapted for leaping, and short, 3-jointed, clubbed antennae that fit into depressions along the sides of the head. Fleas have piercing-sucking mouthparts the principal elements of which are the grooved labrum and a pair of sharp, swordshaped mandibles. The concave inner sides of the mandibles, together with the labrum, form the sucking channel (Ewing and Fox, 1943).

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