How high can fleas jump?

A fleas jump can reach heights of around 60cm and a distance of around 20cm. That is their body length about 100 times upward and 30 times forward.

Fleas are a very small and, if we’re totally honest, quite annoying creature. No one enjoys a visit to the vet for some flea spray or tablets, especially not the infested pet in question. To be fair, i can’t imagine the fleas love it either.

Despite their small stature and negative reputation, they’re quite incredible creatures. Jumping to heights of around 60 centimeters (or 2 feet), they’re excellent at maneuvering themselves around. They can actually jump faster than the average human blink! These factors both make a fleas jump one of the most efficient modes of travel in the animal kingdom. Well, if you count travel as moving from furry animal to furry animal.

The acceleration of their jumps is actually so intense that the poor fleas (i use the word ‘poor’ very liberally) have to withstand about 100 G’s of force. That’s about 100 times the force of gravity.

All of this makes fleas sound almost supernatural or extraterrestrial in nature. I mean, what other creature can match these extreme feats of jumping?! Kangaroos move over, the new king of jumping in the animal kingdom has just arrived!

All jokes aside, it’s easy to gloss over little fleas as an insignificant nuisances, but in actuality they are really cool and interesting little critters!

Other high jumping animals

Now that we’ve covered the remarkable nature of a fleas jump, let’s branch out into the rest of the animal kingdom.

It’d be borderline blasphemous to sit here and talk about high jumping animals without mentioning the kangaroo. Kangaroos are famous for jumping, and rightfully so. They are able to jump to heights of around 10 feet, or about 5 times their own heights. That may not be quite as impressive as a flea, but its still an unfathomably high distance to jump when compared to humans.

Moving on to another animal famous for hopping around, let’s talk about the rabbit. Rabbits can leap to heights of around 2 meters, possibly reaching 4 meters in some instances. Even more impressive, they can gain a horizontal distance of about 9 meters in one jump! To say rabbits are only small creatures, that is no easy task.

Hares, which are sort of like rabbit’s gangly cousins, can also perform some impressive jumps. Hares can run at around 30 miles per hour and leap around three and a half meters in a single jump. Again, these are no where near a fleas jump in terms of body length to jump length ratio, but they’re incredibly impressive never the less.

Other insects can also jump very far, with jumping spiders reaching distances around 50 times their own body length. Grasshoppers can cover around 20 times that of their own bodies too. In general though, the flea remains undefeated in terms of raw jumping power.

When you think of a dolphin, you probably imagining it soaring in the air as it jumps above the surface. This is a fair image to conjure, as dolphins can jump to heights that range anywhere from 4 to 8 times their body length!

Extra information

Animal-Club provides animal parties or animal handling workshops. You will be able to see, learn and interact with many wonderful animals with the help of our presenters. Our mobile zoo has many friendly animals such as rabbits, tarantulas, geckos, vinegaroons and more, perfect for an animal party. We can also , come over to your school for an animal school visit or arrange for an animal workshop with us where the children can learn about looking after animals and animal behaviour, and have fun too.