The Giant Fleas which Sucked Dino Blood | Parasitober

everyone knows the flea it's a small insect you can only barely see with the naked eye it's notorious for sucking the blood of just about anything it lands on this springy insect uses the junk in its trunk to hold a large dollop of icky sticky blood it sucks from its hosts with a needle-like proboscis betraying its true evolutionary affinities what you may not know is that if we travel back 100 million years relatives to today's fleas were bugging the largest animals to ever walk on land or fly in the sky the dinosaurs and pterosaurs for the last episode of paracetober let's take a look at the giant fleas that sucked dino blood [Music] [Music] you know the first attraction i ever built when i came down from scotland it's a flea circus petticoat lane really quite wonderful we had a weed of peas they all move motorized of course but people would say they could see the fleas oh i could see the fleas mummy can't you see the fleas clown please and high waffles and bees on parade this quote from the late richard attenborough's character john hammond says a lot more than it appears it's the culmination of the film's themes dissatisfied with fiction hammond wanted to continue to push the boundaries of what is natural despite what he said about his flea circus the real deal could be one of two things real or fake flea circuses date back many hundreds of years the manipulation of fleas via teeny tiny instruments can be dated back to the late 1500s with mark scalliot inventing a miniature lock and chain in 1578 to hold a flea still the first true flea circuses are recorded from 1800s italy louis bertolotto an italian impresario orchestrated and advertised a flea circus in london in 1820 from there the flea circus rose to popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s before petering out by the late 1960s a grand total of one still remains to this day in germany where performances commence during oktoberfest to put your sense of animal ethics at ease many flea circuses don't and never have used real fleas in the fleas stead the ingenuity of watchmakers was put to good use in producing mechanisms to recreate the effect of a flea circus without living fleas electrical magnetic and mechanical devices were used to give the illusion of fleas rarely pulling wagons shooting balls or jumping through hoops living fleas were released into the circus to provide a more realistic atmosphere in researching this particular diatribe about flea circuses i came across this image is this not the most bizarre thing you've ever seen chipping away teeny bits of flaky limestone and claystone from fragile mineral fossils is one thing but i cannot fathom the level of patience required to semi taxidermize fleas and then create little outfits and dress the fleas up for such an attraction people in the 1800s surely were wilden the flea is notorious for killing an unholy number of people a long time ago the black death as it's known was a pandemic of the bubonic plague caused by the bacteria yersinia pestis yersenia pestis loves to live in the guts of the oriental rat fleet xenopsala sheopsis the oriental rat fleet loves to suck the blood and ride the hide of rats specifically house and field rats those rats happen to be so generalist that they thrive where we thrive a nice warm home filled with free food is a great place for rats to infest rats spread the flea which spread the plague which resulted in the death of one third of europe's population that runs into the tens of millions though we now have treatments that all but eradicate the disease in whomever it infects the disease still exists and still kills people due to advancements in modern medicine over the last hundred years the bubonic plague now infects a grand total of nine people a year in the us globally it killed about 600 people from 2010 to 2015. flea biology the flea itself is a wonder of biology unlike the ticks fleas are true insects three pairs of legs a pair of teeny tiny adorable antennae and sucking mouth parts give away the beast's position as a member of the insecta being an insect parasite has forced this group to evolve creative ways of surviving in such a lifestyle wings are overrated instead these critters jump boy do they jump the flea is one of the best jumpers known to the animal kingdom they're second only to the aptly named treehoppers which look like this the flea is capable of jumping over 50 body lengths in a single bound technically that's about 33 centimeters or 13 inches not very impressive to us mammalian kaiju but it's all about proportions not those proportions if you could jump 50 body lengths in a single bound you'd be able to reach the top of the statue of liberty no sweat this would be a great time to use an animal planet's the most extreme style cursed cgi cutaway gag but i don't have the budget for shoddy cgi here have this super complex rendering i made over the course of many days the flea can complete this feat due to a pair of specialized pads made not of muscle but of an extremely elastic protein called resolin this pad acts like a bow and arrow with the flea deforming the pad before a jump this transforms the energy it needs to push its legs into kinetic energy when the muscles let the pad return to its normal shape it's temporarily locked in a loaded position by a pair of tendons which hold the joint where the pad lies closed until it's ready to spring fleas belong to the order syphonaptra siphonaptera comes from the greek roots siphon which means tube and aptros which means wingless together siphonaptra just means wingless tube that's because yep you guessed it they have a tube and ain't got no wings the fleas are much more host species specific than the ticks this is why there are thousands of species of fleas many of which only suck the blood of one species of animal or a group of close relatives some flea species are technically specific to a type of host but can readily jump to another species if it needs to thus the bubonic plague another thing fleas got going that ticks don't is their preference for warm blood you'll never find a fleas suck in the blood of a lizard snake or turtle fleas usually range anywhere between one and a half and three point three millimeters the largest species of living flea is hyster capsula cheferai the mountain beaver flea this flea can reach up to 13 millimeters or half an inch this makes its head alone the size of an entire dog flea some researchers think this particular species may be this big due to cope's rule which states that organisms tend to get bigger over evolutionary time or due to bergman's rule which states that animals in colder regions tend towards larger sizes as a consequence of the habitat both of these theories don't really fit the giant flea perfectly so it remains a mystery exactly why the species is this big fleas are extremely fast and usually dark colored between a reddish brown and amber they suck blood through a mouth part called a stylette or proboscis which functions almost exactly like a drinking straw fleas are covered with hairs called sete which help them sense vibrations make them difficult to pull out and help them swim through the hair or feathers of their host another adaptation for moving super fast through their host integument is their super flat body the flea body is laterally compressed from side to side so they don't get stuck in between hairs their heads contain two compound eyes though many have reduced or completely absent eyes and you can only really make out two teeny black dots it may not look like it but fleece do still have antennae since fleas need to be as streamlined as possible in order to slip through hair and feathers they don't want their antennae to get in the way over the millennia the fleas antennae have shortened and shrunk their heads also have a pocket-like divot where the antennae usually stay out of the way fleas have one pair of limbs near their heads one in the middle of their thorax and another near the end of the thorax all six legs are capped in long recurved claws for grasping the skin of their hosts feeding fleas fleas are what you'd call a polo metabolis insect polo metabolis describes an insect that goes through four distinct life stages egg larva pupa and adult moths butterflies stink bugs ladybugs and more go through this process like the ticks a flea isn't fully sexually mature when they emerge as adults they must feed and gain some nutrients before they can make the change into adulthood once the mama flea is good and preggered up she plops out anywhere from two to several dozen eggs in one go since fleas are teeny and don't live long they constantly lay eggs once they reach adulthood an adult female flea can squirt out a good 100 to several thousand eggs before she drops dead mama flea will lay her eggs either on the host or somewhere nearby if the flea is on a host that makes a nice warm nest like a rodent or bird it will likely jump off the host and lay the eggs in the nest so they can remain undisturbed and right next to their first victim one particularly gruesome example of fleet-to-host relationships resides in the female rabbit flea spellopsulus cuniculi this little she-beast has all the bells and whistles to sense any change in cortisol and corticosterone hormones in the blood of its rabbit host the higher the levels of these chemicals in the rabbits the more likely she is close to giving birth what would be a better time to lay your hundreds of parasitic eggs than when your host is providing your brood with even more hosts that's right the increase in these hormones jump starts the sex drive of the fleas on the rabbit and they all just start banging as soon as mama rabbit welcomes her little nubbins into the harsh hell world we live in her itty-bitty hitchhikers literally jump at the opportunity to lay their eggs on the baby rabbits once on board the baby buns the fleas suck a little blood do a little dance and get funky tonight after 12 days of their vacation on the baby buns they move their bloated hides back to mama rabbits to begin the migration cycle again once she gives birth the rice-like eggs now laid wherever the female fleet chose hatch into the larval stage flea larvae look like a semi-transparent tube sock with rings of hairs around their body and a horrible mouth at one end the young fleas eat anything they can shove in their wormy mouth holes like dead insects excrement other flea eggs which haven't hatched and vegetable matter these wriggling trash cans are blind and must avoid sunlight this means they keep the dark warm moist places like soil crevices carpets bedding and my armpits four to 18 days after this basement dwelling neckbeard stage the flea transitions by spitting out creamy white silk threads around its now bloated fat little slug body they spin their cocoons and then molt for the first time before pupating inside their cozy little snuggie under good conditions they take about four days to transform into an adult flea the only purpose for the adult form of the flea is to gobble down warm hot blood and get their freak on they only have about two to three months to be an adult before they die so they kinda just have to make the best of it this lifespan is under average conditions without a blood meal they will die in a few days with ideal conditions they can live as long as a year and a half that's just how the flea be [Music] fossil fleas the fossil record of fleas is very small about as small as they are though it's small it's nowhere near as small as the ticks i covered last week where ticks are confined to amber fossils extinct fleas have been captured by the fossil record in both the time hardened resinous amber and compression fossils in limestone those found in amber come most often from dominican amber and baltic amber and they look pretty much exactly like modern fleas those ambers date to the eoc oligacy and myosin so it makes some logical sense they'd appear more like our living fleas those found in the rocks are far more unusual and largely come from the mesozoic era paleopsila the ancient flea paleopsila is latin for ancient flea this is because there are fossil specimens which can be reliably named paleopsila but there's also living species of this genus with us today this is easily the most difficult thing for me to find dirt on one 2019 paper by turkish biologist adam keskin describes a few specimens of a species of paleopsila found draining the blood of the levant mole a still-living mammal there are many other species belonging to this genus which have been described based on specimens from baltic ambers as such this type of flea is still relatively similar to other species of living fleas and having a body flattened side to side jumping hind legs and an unserrated stylette it's officially the first named flea with fossil remains as the genus was named paleopsila in 1903 but since i can't find the original source i cannot figure out if the holotype for the genus was a living flea or an extinct fossil flea one species paleopsila klebsiana was named in 1911 from a specimen of baltic amber this means the extinct species was jumping from host to host in maya scene europe roughly 23 to 5 million years ago there aren't much more meaty insect facts for this one so let's keep going saurophthourus the lizard mice we now come to our first fossil flea that deviates from what we know of flee to be sarotharis was named in 1976 from siberian specimens all of the sarathara specimens are compression fossils this means they were preserved when sediment buried the body and over millions of years the fleas remains were flattened and decayed until the only thing left was a thin carbon film in the exact shape of the fleas body most of the outer anatomy and some of the inner anatomy is preserved since invertebrates have no bones this is pretty much the only way to get a fossil of the non-armored varieties sorotherus meaning lizard lice has had quite a few specimens discovered since the first description in the late 1970s there are currently three accepted species ranging from siberia to china they are the first known occurrence of the giant fossil pseudofleas these fleas have a lot in common with modern fleas but a lot not so in common they are currently understood to be relatives or an offshoot of the same evolutionary branch which gave us modern fleas but are probably not the direct common ancestor the largest specimens of serothorus measure about 12 millimeters or almost half an inch that's about the size of the largest modern flea and much larger than every other modern flea they were bizarre in the shape of their bodies and length of their legs sorotherus was flattened not laterally from side to side but dorsal eventually from top to bottom this made its thorax and abdomen more like a giant laos than a flea hence the name the legs of the little hell beast were way too long longer than its body they were capped and super curved talon-like claws used for hooking on to things the head again unlike modern fleas was spade shaped with prominent eyes and antennae these were body parts which became reduced and more useless in living fleas attached to the bottom of the head is the critter stylette in the case of sarotharis its 1.5 millimeter long stylette is coarsely serrated with nasty backwards pointing teeth sarotheras come from layers of rock dating to the early cretaceous period 125 million years ago since it has been found in the regions of russia and china what could be their hosts many researchers think the serotherous fleas were sucking the blood of the pterosaurs let's rationalize through this just like the researchers did it has long hook-like legs it's big has a flat body not great for swimming through hair or feathers and has better eyesight and antennae sense than modern fleas what does this mean it means the insect probably held itself really close to the skin of its host and that its host probably didn't have a ton of heavy fluff that could slow down the parasite the big size of the flea places it outside the realm of mammals and small reptiles most of the mammals in this time and place were quite small and covered in fur what next dinosaurs and pterosaurs are our best bet modern bat fleas attach themselves more frequently to the wing membranes what better place to get your suck on than the thin membranes of a wing where most of the blood vessels are close to the surface as a consequence of this habit the bat fleas have long grasping legs to hook onto the smoother surface of the wing i hate to break it to you but there weren't any bats alive during the early cretaceous so pterosaurs best fit the bill giant pterosaur-sucking ectoparasites tarwinia and nuratiya australian fleas suck the last place you'd think to find fossil fleas would be australia but that's exactly where some of the first ones were found the first fossil fleas outside of whatever mess was made of paleopsila have also created their own taxonomic mess tarwinia and neurotia are genera of fossil fleas uncovered in australia and described in 1970 neurotia was first described as a small flea more closely related to modern fleas while tarwinia had enough characteristics to tell the guy who described it that it was different from modern fleas over the decades since the description it has been found that naratiya is a weirdly preserved larva of a dragonfly we can't forget about poor neratiya though tarwinia and naratiya were described before sarotharis i wanted to talk about them after i had already discussed sirotherus for a good reason tarwinia australis is a regular sized flea with the proportions and anatomy of the giant sarotharis and another giant flea i want to get into later as you can see in the fossil material it has long spindly legs a bulbous body and long antennae it has a body flattened from side to side like modern fleas but much flatter from top to bottom like the other mesozoic fleas due to the way the fossil is preserved researchers couldn't make out the mouthparts for decades the mouthparts are particularly important for determining if this thing is a true flea or even remotely related to a flea it wasn't until a 2013 redescription of the fossil that it was put to rest that the fossil does indeed preserve some mouthparts those mouth parts are unquestionably flea-like in being a long siphon tube with teeth used to suck the red liquid from the dark sarcophagus on top of that they found that the tarwinia has a comb-like structure of bug hairs which are called sete on its legs this structure is collectively termed the tinia it's one of the many ways to tell the difference between species of fleas because it just so happens to be different from species to species like the other species of mesozoic fleas tarwinia has the comb-like tinia on its tibia their tibia are just the part of the six legs that is closest to the foot or tarsus the foot usually starts where the segmentation becomes super crazy like here it's these tinia that made the redescriptors think it was used to make the flea a and a half to get off that would mean the reason this structure is different from species to species is due to the flea specializing in a different host what could little five and a half millimeter tarwinia have been parasitizing considering its smaller size it wouldn't have been out of place on the backs of smaller animals like compsegnathids alvarosaurids driosaurs and more since it comes from the lower cretaceous period of australia dinosaurs are the most probable host candidate they could have used their long legs to hold on to scales and suck at their leisure strashilla the buffali 1992 saw the description of a truly bizarre insect fossil strashila incredibilis this seven millimeter long insect comes from the upper jurassic aged layer of rock called the bada formation in what is now russia strashila comes from a russian word which translates into english as scarecrow this is due to just how bizarre this insect is as you can see it has a long flat abdomen but then it has long bulbous spines sticking out the sides at the end of each segment then we come to the legs the first two pairs are normal medium length bug legs but the last pair are huge these inflated limbs end with a spine which may have acted like a pincer against the foot to grasp onto objects in its environment what it actually is was always in question due to its bizarre body in the paper which described the little beastie the author alexander rasnitzen suggested it was either a really weird aquatic scorpion fly or a really weird flea after some time it was figured that this critter is an aquatic scorpion fly that used those big back legs for paddling around though it isn't a flea i thought it was interesting enough to include here pulex dominatrix flea the next flea to appear in our circus is pulex alerimarius the pulex genus is still alive today and includes our very own human flea pulex irritants the extinct pulex species comes from amber sourced from the dominican republic as a member of a living genus the extinct pulex larimerius isn't bizarre enough for me to cover at any great length but it is interesting to note that this specimen was preserved with about five thin strands of mammal hair the descriptors think it's probable the hairs belong to the fleas host but cannot confirm this the researchers also state that the chances of hair in a flea preserved together might be 1 in 1 billion this makes it highly likely that the flea was preserved with bits of its host rather than just so happening to be fossilized alongside some loose hairs eospilopsalis baby's first hair flea the first fully extinct genus of flea to be described from dominican amber is eospilopsulus cabertai eos bilopsalis comes from eos meaning dawn pilo meaning hair and obsolus meaning flea therefore it's the first hair flea this specimen is of a male flea preserved in early maya scene amber this little football of a flea is unique in how compact its body is instead of that separation between the first set of legs and the last set this little blood bag is basically an oval with all of its legs scrunched up like how your obese uncle squeezes himself onto a plane like living fleas this little bastard is covered from head to thorax and hard backwards pointing bristles to aid it in swiftly slipping through the hair of small mammals it's possible hosts based on the fossil record of the dominican republic may include insectivorous selenidons and echemian rats pseudo pulix fake flea now we get to the biggest of big boys the largest fossil flea species belongs to the pseudo-pulex genus these false fleas could grow up to 22.8 millimeters long or just about an inch that doesn't seem like much and is still small for an insect but compared to most fleas this thing was gigantic these fleas are related to the other pseudo-fleas like sarotharis and tarwinia with long spindly legs a flattened lice-like body long antennae and big eyes pseudo-pulix wins the prize for largest though it had a rather nasty stylet too the longest stylet among pseudo-pulex specimens measures 5.15 millimeters which is about as long as the entire body of some modern fleets it was armed to each side with large backwards pointing teeth the length of the stylet and its teeth suggest it was poking it through tough thick hides these fleas come from the middle jurassic to early cretaceous rocks of china one species was found in the yeshin formation which is known for the presence of the early tyrannosaur eu tyrannus the largest feathered dinosaur known as a relative to the other giant pseudofleas pseudo-pulex comes equipped with all the accoutrements needed to suck the juicy red liquids of big beasties dinosaurs and pterosaurs to be exact since its legs were not quite as gangly as saurothrous it's possible pseudopulex were adapted more for the blood sucking of scaly dinosaurs where they could hook their raptorial talons around the edges of scales while inserting their barbed mouth parts into the skin between the scales since these giant pseudofleas didn't have the same jumping capabilities as the smaller modern fleas they were unable to easily spraying from one host to another this might suggest these guys just stuck to one host for the majority of their lives that kind of lifestyle fits the anatomical quirks i've gone over modern fleas are specialized for slipping through fur jumping from host to host sucking down blood and reproducing while pseudofleas are specialized for cozying up real close to a giant host's hide and hunkering down for a long period of time hooking themselves securely to a scale and sucking until they can't suck no more fleas are important to the well-being of life as we know it fleas consume a great amount of blood from their hosts over long periods of deep time if there were no fleas there would be a large quantity of biomass no longer circulating throughout the many cycles of our planet the diseases they carry are important population controls the behavior they change in their hosts is important for forming hygiene and they provide food for a ton of teeny animals same goes for all parasites i still wouldn't want to come face to face with an inch-long flea though that can stay extinct thanks for sticking with me for this parasitoper event i know this video didn't come out in the last few days of october but that's because i have a life i've noticed that these parasite videos have gotten a lot of positive feedback i too have had a lot of diabolical fun learning about the foul world of parasites whether it was the armored exoskeletons of the ticks the slow agonizing death spiral of the fungus spiders or the dazzling dance of the zombie snails it's all been quite eye-opening since there's been some obvious interest in the topics of parasitology marine biology and paleontology over the last few months i might continue to make videos on such topics well beyond the end of a given event next october i will definitely do something different so parasite videos outside of october will be required with that being said what might we find to get all the way under our skin next what bizarre relationships nasty morphologies or despicable weapons might we learn about stay tuned thanks for watching and thanks for spending this spooky month with me it's been a ghast make sure you like this video and share it around leave a comment if you like and subscribe hit the bell icon too if you want to stay in the know with everything edge thanks for watching pledge to my patreon at any tier you like for a slew of many delicious offerings special thanks to patrons dinosaur naticat ed perez steve bradshaw thea spencer dana manchester aphid kirby chris frampton and antron [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: E.D.G.E

Views: 100,814

Rating: 4.877079 out of 5

Keywords: paleontology, cryptozoology, science, education, fossils, EDGE, zoology, natural history, scicomm, geology, jurassic world, jurassic park, evolution, documentary, dinosaur, dinosaur game, rocks, crystals, stratigraphy, paleoart, natural history museum, animal, nature, science education, mystery, biology, united states, flea, saurophthirus, pseudopulex, tarwinia, parasites, mesozoic, amber, insect, bloodsucker, vampire

Id: U6jvkecx2s0

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SciArts]

They where only a couple centimetres though, and likely had specific species for different archosaur hosts