How To Tell If You Have Fleas Or Bed Bugs

How To Tell If You Have Fleas Or Bed Bugs

Fleas and bed bugs are some of the most difficult pests to eliminate from your home. But you can find out if it’s one of them by following these steps.

So you think you might have fleas? Or is it bed bugs maybe? Let’s discuss the differences between fleas and bed bugs. After all, understanding the difference might end up with you spending more money to solve your problem instead of less money. Also, let me tell you if you do have them, how to get rid of them. And then also if you don’t, what things to look out for so that you don’t get them yourself in the future.

How To Tell If You Have Fleas Or Bed Bugs

How To Tell If You Have Fleas Or Bed Bugs

Fleas and bed bugs are both parasitic pests, but they can cause very different problems. If you’re wondering if you’ve got fleas or bed bugs in your home, there are some telltale signs you can look out for.

First, let’s talk about what makes these two animals so different:

Fleas: The most obvious difference between fleas and bed bugs is in their size—fleas are tiny insects (usually around 1/8th of an inch long) while bed bugs are slightly larger (around 1/4th of an inch long). Both are flat-bodied insects with six legs and segmented bodies—so it’s easy to see why people would mistake one for the other.

Bed Bugs: Bed bugs have a flat body shape and long antennae, which distinguishes them from other insects that might be found in your home (like spiders or roaches). They also have a yellowish-brown coloration with dark spots on their backs. This makes them easy to identify when compared against other insects that may have similar coloring!

When you’re trying to tell if you have fleas or bed bugs, it’s important to remember that there are a few key differences between the two pests.

First, you’ll want to check for signs of fleas on your pets. Fleas tend to be smaller than bed bugs, so they can be hard to see. You might also notice that your pet has red bumps on their skin—these are flea bites and they’ll look like small red dots. If you think you’ve found fleas, try using a flea comb to get an accurate count of how many there are.

If you’re still not sure if it’s fleas or bed bugs, take a closer look at the bugs themselves. Fleas aren’t great jumpers and tend to move around slowly (and often in circles), whereas bed bugs can easily jump onto walls and other surfaces from several feet away.

How To Tell If You Have Fleas Or Bed Bugs

Appearance

Both pests are reddish brown and large enough to see with the naked eye. However, bed bugs are flat and oval-shaped, while fleas have long, narrow bodies, which appear flattened from the top to bottom of their body.

Hosts

Fleas and bed bugs consume the blood of mammals. Bed bugs prefer humans and rarely bite animals if people are nearby. On the other hand, fleas would rather feed on cats or dogs, but may settle for humans when necessary.

Keep in mind that simply finding bites on people or animals is not a sufficient way to identify bed bugs vs. fleas, nor is the appearance of the bite. Since everyone reacts differently to the pests, not all bed bug or flea bites look the same.

Movement

Method of travel is another noticeable difference between bed bugs and fleas. Bed bugs crawl slowly and cannot fly or jump. In contrast, fleas have strong legs and move by leaping long distances.

Regardless of whether you’re dealing with bed bugs or fleas, you want them gone from your home. Now. But before you drive yourself crazy scratching, it’s important to know which of the two nearly invisible arthropods you’re dealing with. Treatments are necessary in both cases. However, depending on whether you have bed bugs or fleas, the most effective treatment will differ.

What is the difference between bed bugs and fleas?

While both require a warm-blooded host to provide blood meals, fleas tend to prefer feeding on hairy or furry animals such as cats and dogs. Bed bugs prefer feeding on your family.

To this end, cats, dogs and other animals (including outdoor wildlife) are generally associated with bringing fleas into the home, as opposed to bed bugs, which are generally brought in by people.

While fleas can live several months without a host in the pupa stage, adult fleas can only live about two weeks. Adult bed bugs can survive up to a year between feedings.

One flea can lay between 150 and 300 eggs every week. One bed bug can lay 200 in a lifetime (approximately 10 months to one year).

Bed bugs do not fly or jump. They have to crawl across your bed to feed. Fleas can jump almost 200 times their body length: 13 inches. This helps them transfer between hosts and “hitch rides” to travel to new sources of food (i.e., you and your family).

While bed bugs have not been discovered to pass on human pathogens, fleas have the ability to spread diseases such as typhus, plague and cat-scratch fever.

How can you tell bed bugs and fleas apart?

If you’ve captured one of these little assailants, immobilize the pest with a piece of clear tape. This will ensure it doesn’t escape to bite again while also allowing you to examine the bug before showing it to your professional pest control experts. Here’s how to tell if you’ve caught bed bugs or fleas:

1. Bed bugs are reddish-brown, flat and seed-shaped. They range from 1.5 mm to 5 mm long.
2. Fleas are also reddish-brown but have a more oval shape that appears skinnier and longer, rather than flatter. Fleas are also generally smaller, ranging in length from 1.5 mm to 3.3 mm.
3. Bed bugs are nocturnal, and if you do see them, they are likely to be digesting meals on the piping of your mattress, in and around the bed frame or box spring, along the baseboards and creeping around in other well-hidden cracks and crevices.
4. Fleas are also nocturnal parasites but are more likely to be found clinging to your pets, making themselves at home in animal sleeping areas or lurking around in your upholstery or carpeting, waiting to hop on for a bite.

What bit me – bed bugs or fleas?

If you’re scratching at red marks on your body, you likely already have a bed bug infestation. If you have children and pets, check for signs of bites on them as well. Here are a few things that will help you figure out whether you have fleas or bed bugs, although it is important to remember that bite marks depend on the person and can be very situational:

1. Flea bites resemble a cluster of mosquito bites. They are usually randomly placed and often appear as dots with a dark red center from the single puncture bite of the flea’s specially built mouth, allowing it to suck blood.
2. Bed bug bites appear as raised, flat red welts due to an allergic reaction to the anesthesia and anticoagulants found in the bug’s saliva. Bed bug bites often appear in a straight row or line, consisting of three or four bites, though this is not always the case.
3. A flea wheal (red bump) becomes swollen less than an hour after the bite. It starts to itch immediately and persistently. The bite can turn into an open sore or blister in one to two days.
4. Bed bug bites can take a few days or even a week to show up. They gradually begin to itch more as well, since the anesthetic from their saliva starts to wear off.
5. Bed bugs come out for blood meals every seven to 10 days as you sleep. Adult female fleas will feed numerous times, day and night – often for hours on end – if you let them.

List Of How To Tell If You Have Fleas Or Bed Bugs