How to harness a flea?

Many have wondered just how you would connect a flea to a chariot or wagon. Well the answer is simply that you tie them by forming a loop with thin wire and pulling it tight as the flea passes through. This is not an easy task and even those who are well practiced might take between 10 minutes and an hour to complete the task.

You can purchase a harnessed flea from Walt Noon.



In Episodes of insect life by Acheta Domestica 1851, people question if the fleas were glued but Bertolotto insists that his are tied.

These and all other such recorded feats have ceased to be marvels to the patrons of those "industrious fleas" who still, we believe, continue to ply their daily labours in Regent Street or the Strand; but they serve to show, that amongst the grand discoveries and inventions of this our 19th century, the art of breaking in fleas to harness is not one. Bertolotti asserts that the saddles, etc, on his flea company were really fastened by girths, not by gum, as the incredulous have thought, the corslets of the pygmy wearers being too highly polished for anything to stick upon them.