Household Pets Can Also Invite Household Pests

People love their pets. In fact, many pet owners may have more than one pet and consider their pets just as important than their human relatives or friends. Unfortunately, for the pet owners, most pets become unlikely hosts to unfriendly pests that they can bring into your home, which can be of major concern for humans and pets alike.

Dogs and cats are the perfect hosts for fleas, especially if your pets frequent the outside or interact with other animals in parks or around your neighborhood. Fleas can easily migrate from the pet to your home where they begin to feast on you rather than the pet! This is especially true if your animals sleep with you, which is very common for both dogs and cats. It is important to save your home and pets from bloodsucking fleas with some ticks and methods.

According to a published report, sleeping with pets isn’t unusual. Nearly half of all dogs sleep in their owner’s beds and nearly 62% of all cats sleep with their adult owners, and another 13% of cats sleep with children. Now, there is nothing wrong with having pets sleep with you at night, assuming they are not disrupting your sleep or sharing their fleas and other unsavory critters with you in the process. 

However, once fleas are established in your home they can be very difficult to get rid of since their lifecycle can undergo weeks, months or even years depending upon environmental conditions, which requires a pest control Canberra company to rid for you.

One of the side effects of your pet having fleas is also being exposed to a certain type of tapeworm. Animals will lick and ingest fleas while grooming. Unfortunately, fleas play a necessary role in the life cycle and reproduction of these tapeworms.

This tapeworm is known as Dipylidium caninum, which lives in the small intestines of dogs and cats. As the tapeworm grows in your pets intestines, segments break off, full of eggs, which are then passed in the feces. As the segments dry out, they break open releasing the eggs inside. A flea larva will then ingests the eggs which then develop into an immature form inside the flea. When a dog or cat ingests the flea, the immature tapeworm moves to its new host and sets up permanent residence. The process is then repeated itself over and over again. Pet host can carry multiple tapeworms which could endanger the health of the animal over a period of time.

Unfortunately, humans are also susceptible to these tapeworm infections as they can accidentally ingest an infected flea, while sleeping or when a child puts their fingers in their mouth while playing with animals etc.