Pulgas Vestidas for Sale

In my research into trained fleas, I came across Painted Fleas or Pulgas Vestidas, I've quizzed a few experts on why they are made. The natural history museum passed on the following article that was first published in an edition of Flea News by Frans Smit from the Rothschild Zoological Museum at Tring.

Just a small point - the fleas themselves are not actually dressed, they form only the head of the tiny figures. They are amazingly detailed considering they are hand-made, probably without much magnification and best appreciated under a microscope. Tring has the peasant couple (2 fleas) and the NHM (not on display) two bridal couples accompanied by a 6-piece Mariachi band (10 fleas). None are more than a 5mm tall.

In 1910 the Hon. N. Charles Rothschild was offered a fine collection of fleas from Mexico - in those days quite a terra incognita as regards these insects. To his intense disappointment (but surely to NCR's amusement) the collection proved to consist of twelve dressed fleas, known as pulgas vestidas. They consisted of two "peasants", a man carrying wood and a woman with a basket which form one of the more popular exhibits in the public galleries at Tring Museum. The other is a set piece comprising two brides and bridegrooms with a Mexican band that now reside in the Entomological collections of the British Museum (Natural History) in London.

This week I received an email telling me about big collection (pun not intended) of these fleas, 12 in total on sale on the Canadian Ebay.

Rare Vintage Pulgas Vestidas Dressed Fleas Mexican Folk Art Bulk 12 Pack Lot

Each box is 2 match heads high by 3 match heads wide. Each doll's head is a flea, and each color of material is a different material. there are 2 different displays. All photographs and microscope images are from actual items on auction. Photograph with Canadian $2.00 coin for scale.
A) Bride and Groom (x 7) Each groom in a Tux, each Bride in veil, and has a bouquictttureet
B) Farmer and wife 1 (x 5, Pink clothes) male dressed with sombrero, and carrying a bail of wood, and female in Mexican traditional head dress.
D) Bulk packaging (outer packaging for 12 pack (7x bride and grooms, 5x pink farmer and wife) Scribe on side of box Indios (in Spanish meaning Indians – to the best of my ability). The outer package is in good to poor condition, but has protected the 12 inner displays, to a pristine quality.

As with everything in the flea circus world the history of Pulgas Vestidas is wrapped in flamboyant stories with suggestions that these were made by nuns or monks being common. The sets nearly always seem to be related to marriages so perhaps there is a religious connection. The seller does have evidence that dates the items back to 1920s so we can be fairly sure these items are pretty old.

Fleas in Novels

The latest from Lee and the Victorian London website is a searchable index of literature.

Of course the first thing I did with it was to search for fleas. This returned an interesting selection of books with flea references. Here's a sample of the results at the time the query was run

Middlemarch, by George Eliot - "I should stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake"

The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope - "'With a flea in her lug,' suggested the farmer."

Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens - "I looks at him tolerable hard. 'Fleas?' says I. 'And more,' says he. 'Wampires?' says I. 'And more,' says he."
also
"Astonishment making him surly, he preferred the latter, and sent her into the toll-house with a flea in her ear."

Antonina, by Wilkie Collins - "It is easier to make a drinking-vessel of the skull of a flea than to make an honest man of such a villainous night-walker as thou art!"

The Mysteries of London, by G.W.M.Reynolds - Chapter 246 - The Party at Ravensworth Hall - "And bid smart onions rise To churn me in my mantling path and give A flea to nerve the thought that I may live To bask in thy blear'd eyes!"

Cometh up as a Flower, by Rhoda Broughton - "I vault from the sofa, as if the spirit of a flea had passed into me, and walk across the room; my legs feel stiff and sore"

After Dark, by Wilkie Collins - "he is among my men and here am I ready to look for a flea or two in his bedstead"

The Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley - "the Queen of all the Fairies, who makes the clouds thunder and the fleas bite"

Adam Bede, by George Eliot - "Aye, it's ill livin' in a hen-roost for them as doesn't like fleas"

Felix Holt, by George Eliot - "the utmost stretch of their ideas will not place them on a level with the intelligent fleas"

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.

International Flea Database

For reseachers into fleas what more could you need than an International Flea Database

The project from Brigham Young University has two main aims:

"It is our intent to not only summarize the wide spread available data, but also provide a platform for the constant renewal and updating of different data"

"extensive evaluation of taxonomic characters, and their distribution across taxa, including the outgroup will lead to a feasible datamatrix"

Flea Places

There are many places named after fleas around the world.


View Flea Places in a larger map

In the USA, fleas are popular for placenames.

Fleaville, Shasta County (which unfortunately no longer exists)
Flea Creek, Montana
Flea Hill, Delaware
Flea Hop, Elmore County, Alabama

In the south there are places also named after the Spanish word for fleas, "Las Pulgas", and a good few flea places in Spain too.

Las Pulgas Canyon and Las Pulgas Road in Camp Pendleton
"Rancheria de las Pulgas", San Diego

Avenida de las Pulgas ("Avenue of the Fleas"),

If we look at the French name for flea, Puce there are a few places, firstly in Canada and also in France.

Puce, Ontario
Pucé, 69670 Vaugneray, France

Down in New Zealand, the fleas get a nautical theme, not to be mistaken for the popular internet auction site.

Flea Bay, New Zealand

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - Size Matters

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures have been filmed earlier this month and will be shown on BBC Four on 28, 29 and 30 December at 8pm. Dr Mark Miodownik, a materials scientist from King's College London, will
explore the extraordinary world of size and scale.

There are ants mentioned in the description for the first show and I'm really hoping that there will be fleas too. If not I'll publish my own findings on why a human sized flea would not be able to jump over St Pauls in the New Year.

<< STOP PRESS >>

It has been confirmed that there is a good flea demonstration in the lecture by Tim Cockerill. Fleas generously provided by the hedgehogs at Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital



<< STOP PRESS >>

Conditioning of insects

A recent edit to the wikipedia article on flea circus suggested that fleas can't be trained or conditioned because they have no brain. It also suggested that some fleas are more inclinded to jump and others to walk so it's a case of selection rather than conditioning. This of course contradicts the long running parable of fleas in a jar being conditioned not to jump and once the lid is taken off then the fleas still jump no higher than before the lid was removed.

Firstly to address the question of does a flea have a brain, Richard Fox comments, "The nervous system consists of a dorsal, anterior brain of two or three pairs of ganglia, circumenteric connectives, and a paired ventral nerve cord with segmental ganglia and segmental peripheral nerves.". A bit of explaination of what that means can be found in this article on Brain Evolution which sees a link between the number of sensory organs and brain power.

With regards to the use of those senses and how they affect the behaviour of fleas aspect there has also been some research done, by Michael Dryden aka "Dr Flea".

"Contrast of a moving dark cylinder against a light backdrop was visually attractive to the fleas. No visual orientation was demonstrated under red light. Increasing the complexity of patterns on the target did not increase its attractiveness. Orientation and attraction to a stationary heated target was demonstrated, but required the additional stimulation of air movements to evoke a directed jump. Light, CO2, and air currents stimulated locomotion."

Osbrink, W.L.A. and Rust, M.K., 1985. Cat flea (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae): factors influencing host finding behavior in the laboratory. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am., 78:29 34.

Walt Noon the magician, inventor and flea circus performer has also reports seeing this behavior.

Apart from the flea circuses there has not been much research into the actual conditioning of fleas how there has been some for other creatures.

Insect Conditioning
http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.441.3

Conditioning of moths
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n10/abs/nn.2192.html

Pavlov's Cockroach
Classical Conditioning of Salivation in an Insect
Hidehiro Watanabe, Makoto Mizunami*
http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000529#n101

So I'm not sure if there is a strong argument for nature vs nurture with fleas. I'd advise anyone hoping to have performing fleas would be advised to tap into the flea's behaviour of responding to heat, light, CO² and air movements.

And finally, some slightly more questionable research into do fleas have higher level emotions.

Fleas on Etsy

I've found a few flea items on Etsy, here's the best of this week's selections



Flea Pin
Flea Greeting Card



Flea Cushion
Dot's Flea Circus Limited Edition print
Better than a flea circus origional print
Dark Alphabet - B is for Bonfire
Flea Circus Collage

The Snow Flea

Opening on November 3rd at Theatre Massalia, Marseille, Buchinger's Boot Marionettes present "La Puce de Neige" ("The Snow Flea"), a fantastical puppet-opera by Patrick Sims, with original musical score by Ergo Phizmiz.

Fleas in the Bible

Fleas have been around a long time, they are even mentioned in the Bible. When David is being pursued by King Saul he compares himself to a flea.

1 Samuel 26:20b
“For the king of Israel has come out to seek a flea, as when one hunts a partridge in the mountains.”

The following links mention the flea as "pa'-rosh" and "barghut" so perhaps there's some more flea translations to be added to the Flea Circus Research Library Language of Fleas page.

Historic Japanese Flea and other insects

The above image of a flea is part of Kenbikyō Mushi No Zu (”Illustrations of Microscopic Insects”), a scroll published in 1860. The scroll contains paintings of a series of insects and seen through a microscope.

The Tohoku University Library houses the original copy of the Kenbikyō Mushi No Zu scroll.

Source: Stephen Reinhardt of Tessella Zine and edo of Pink Tentacle

Flea Circuses topic on QI

Stephen Fry quizzes his contestants on their knowledge of Flea Circuses on the QI quiz show. In a episode called "Flora and Fauna" he is joined by John Sergeant, Jimmy Carr, Jo Brand and Alan Davies.

Q: What was the biggest destroyer of human fleas? Asks Fry
A: Vacuum Cleaners answers John Sergeant.

However Sergeant then goes on to incorrectly comments that if a human being had as powerful legs as a flea that they could jump over the Eiffel tower. The flea can jump 80 times its own height but if you scaled that up to human sizes then it would not be as high. The reason for this is that muscle strength scales with cross section but mass would increase with volume on a cubic scale. This would mean that a human with flea legs could jump (cuberoot of 80)squared i.e. approx 18.5 times their own height. Taking the UK average of 175cm, which multipled by 18.5 is approx 32m which although very impressive is only 1/10 of the height of the Eiffel tower.

I thought Mr Fry was rather over exuberant with regards to the one rare example of the flea band (who were glued to a heated tray) where as the majority of flea performances were about pulling things, something that does not put any more strain on the flea than a horse pulling a cart. It sounded like he got all his information from Wikipedia but the clips from Pathe News were very good.




BBC Flea (contains Adult themes) 5mins -> 9mins

Hooke's Flea on tour in the Hayward Gallery

Robert Hooke's 1665 drawing of a flea has gone south of the river for a few weeks. On loan from the Royal Society's collection at UCL it's now visible at the Hayward Gallery as part of Mark Wallinger's exhibition The Russian Linesman, "Frontiers, Borders and Thresholds".



"Mark Wallinger, winner of the 2007 Turner Prize and one of Britain's most original and unpredictable artists, curates this unique exhibition exploring notions of the liminal: thresholds between physical, political or metaphysical realms."

Exhibition Details

Robert Hooke was a scientist and inventor and is credited with improving the barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer. However he is most famous for his biological studies as documented in Micrographia which was made possible his design for a compound microscope based on Anton van Leeuwenhoek previous model. Hooke was asked by the Royal Society to confirm Leeuwenhoek's suggestion of microscoping life in water and duely did so. He also looked at Mites in Cheese, and the Blue of Plums confirming both to be living organisms.

ROBERT HOOKE (1635-1703)
Robert Hooke - experimental scientist
A picture of Robert Hooke

Flea Delusions

I've been reading about the unfortunate condition delusory parasitosis in May R. Berenbaum's book, "Bugs in the System". The condition is where people imagine bugs crawling on or in their bodies. The patient can be so convinced that they can actually persuade others that they have bugs on them too.

May writes of Spanish Film Maker, Luis Brunel's autobiography where he mentions a visit to see Salvador Dali in Montmatre.

'I found him stripped to the waist, an enormous bandage on his back. Apparently he thought he'd felt a "flea" or some other strange beast and had attacked his back with a razor blade. Bleeding profusely, he got the hotel manager to call a doctor, only to discover that the "flea" was in reality a pimple.'

Reference:

May R. Berenbaum: Bugs in the System 1995, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Bunel, Luis., 1982. My Last Sigh. New York: Vintage

  

Flea Adverts

Mirroring the jewelers and watchmakers of the 19th Century, Swiss Watch Makers International Watch Co. Schaffhausen have used a flea to show just how small and intricate they can make their watch parts.



Working with Agency Jung von Matt from Germany, IWC have created a series of adverts showing their "Passion for Detail", as well as the Flea Circus Advert, their adverts also include a tiny dartboard and a tiny labyrinth style game.

Herman Melville - Not a flea fan

I'm not in agreement with Herman Melville who claimed that

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 104

I suggest Herman needs to read one of the many flea books that are around.

Too dirty for fleas

The Manchester Evening News reports of a house that was so dirty even the fleas refused to live there.

Anna McDonald, prosecuting at Manchester Magistrates Court, said: "These cats walked, sat and slept in their own excrement. The conditions were so bad that even flea eggs could not survive. This is a case where a life ban from keeping animals is appropriate."

Obviously this is very unfortunate for the cats but I found it facinating that there were such conditions that would be damaging to flea reproduction.

Was it the lack of humidity that stopped the eggs? Or could be other cat illnesses within the excrement that have affected the fleas such as toxoplasmosis, bartonella or tapeworms (that use fleas as a carrier) that could have killed off the fleas? It could also have been a high quantity of ammonia from the cat urine.

Japanese Flea Poem

Fleas! Lice!
A horse peeing By my pillow

--Basho, seventeenth century Japanese poet, staying at a roadside inn.
(Translated by R.Toby)

from "Bugs in the system" by May R. Berenbaum

Flea Quotes

Quotes Daddy has some excellent Flea quotes including my favourites.

Mark Twain: "Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can"
Shakespeare: "That's a valiant flea that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion."

Fleas don't always jump

I was watching the "Invasion of the body scratchers" yesterday with Mike Leahy and it just happened to be the one where he looks at ticks and fleas. One thing that was obvious from the section on fleas was that they don't actually spend all of the time jumping. Perhaps, Fleas jumping is just something they do when a new food source (person or animal) arrives in the area they are dormant.

Amoret Whitaker from the Department of Entomology, The Natural History Museum provided some clarification.

"Most film footage of fleas probably shows them in isolation, when they are likely to do a fair amount of jumping, as they are trying to find a new host to settle on. However, once located on a suitable host, they will move around by crawling/walking through the hair/fur, and are unlikely to do much jumping unless disturbed, or the host dies, in which case they will try to jump onto a new (live) host. They will spend most of the time on the host itself, although adult fleas will also be found in the host's "nest" eg. cat basket, bird's nest etc."

Amoret Whitaker (nee Brandt) is a renowned flea expert and responsible for the recently updated and catchily named "RES Handbook Volume 1 Part 16: Fleas (Siphonaptera) 2nd Edition" she is currently working on Forensic Entomology.