UK Flea Atlas Published

By Paula Leflug

A new atlas, published this week, has mapped the distribution of the 60 species of flea found in Britain and Ireland.

The atlas is the result of 59 years of work by former World War Two fighter pilot and science teacher, Bob George from Bournemouth, UK.

Mr George, 86, has painstakingly studied the fleas on everything from voles to bat poo since first becoming interested in the jumpy little blighters in 1949. And he's done it all voluntarily.

“It’s kept me out of mischief,” Mr George told the Telegraph. “They intrigue me. I’ve always been able to find a lot of time for fleas. I’m often called the Flea Man.”

He continued: “I took on fleas because no-one else would, but it has certainly provided me with a life time’s work which will hopefully go on for many more years. It is a great pleasure to see this edition of the atlas published, though when compared with that of more popular groups, such as butterflies and dragonflies, it is obvious that there is much work still to be done.”

We were thinking of taking the micky a bit, but it turns out that Bob George flew numerous Spitfires missions during WWII and was one of the first cohort of pilots to fly meteor jets - the only jet planes to see service during the war.

With that kind of pedigree, we shudder to think what he'd do to a bunch of lily-livered journos. So instead, here's a bunch of flea-facts:

Around 2600 species are found worldwide.

The rarest UK flea is Ceratophyllus fionnus. It is found on just one mountain on the Scottish island of Rum.

People are most often bitten by Pulex irritans, the human flea, but we also get got by cat, hen, hedgehog and squirrel fleas.

Moles play host to the largest fleas in Britain, Hystrichopsylla talpae grows to be 7mm long. Luckily, however, mole fleas don't compare with fleas in Russia and North America, which can reach 25mm.

A hedgehog was found to have 7,116 of the little blood-suckers living on it. House martins are also particularly flea-ridden beasts.

Bank voles are home to the most species of flea, at least 27.

The Flea Atlas of Britain and Ireland by R.S. George is being published by the UK Biological Records Centre (BRC) and is available from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology priced a mere £8 - how can you resist?

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