the.com/flea
a sesame seed that benches your body weight and leaps over your house.
means A tiny wingless insect that survives by sucking the blood of mammals and birds, famous for its outsized jumping ability.
from From Old English 'flēah,' a word with deep Germanic roots — cousins survive in Dutch 'vlo' and German 'Floh.' Some have linked it, speculatively, to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to jump' or 'to flee,' which would make the flea's escape act baked right into its name; but that connection is uncertain, and honestly the little creature has been called something close to 'flea' for as long as English has been English.
- jump height
- clears 150 times its own body length
- acceleration
- launches at 100 times Earth's gravity
- black death
- its bite emptied medieval Europe
- blood diet
- drinks 15 times its weight daily
- ancient circus
- trained to pull tiny carts for crowds
siphonaptera — order of parasitic insects with ~2,500 species, smallest weighing 0.1mg
pulex irritans — human flea species that infested medieval europe causing plague transmission
ctenocephalides felis — cat flea, most common flea on pets worldwide, vectors tapeworms