Performing Fleas.

King Country Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 909, 23 September 1916, Page 7

Performing Fleas.

A "PROFESSOR" TELLS HOW HE ' TRAINS THEM. One of the attractions at a fair recently was a troupe of trained fleas. The "professor" in charge of this exhibit was explaining about the flea performance. He said : "The teaching of the flea to do any sort of; trick is, of course, a tedious, difficult matter. The first thing to do is to break them of their natural habit of jumping. "One can see how necessary this is when one considers the insect is less than one-eighth of an inch in length, with a jump of 3ft., thus 300 times its own length. If a 6ft. man had the same leaping power he could make leaps of 1,800 ft., so that when a flea has the advantage of one leap he is as good as gone for ever. My apparatus for jump breaking is a round glass ball. I confine him in this for three weeks. I look through thi* ball, touch it, flash lights into it, talk, do everything to let the flea accustom himself to my presence. At firßt he will jump aud jump. He strikes against the curved walls and gets bruised. After a time, and I find three weeks to be ample, the flea gets to know me, and he also gets to know that it is less painful to crawl than to jump and get bruised. "The ilea cannot differentiate between transparent glass and no glass, so that when I take him from the ball he still fears this peculiar obstruction and so he don't jump. So you see, a flea must have some rear soning power somewhere, but I am in no position to say where it is located. That is why I have to pick them up with tweezers and put them on my arm wkea I want to feed them. They do»'t dare to jump od me."