One thing about this time of year, there are no bugs trying to eat you. Or… are there?
I was out for a walk yesterday and noticed that there were bugs. Snow fleas. Lots and lots of snow fleas.
This got me wondering exactly what these things are. They don’t seem to be massing for an attack. They are just laying in the snow. What sort of self respecting flea just lays around in a snowbank?
Thankfully, the google machine came to my rescue. Turns out, snow fleas are not really fleas. They’re not even insects. They look sort of like fleas. They hope around like fleas, or seem to. But they are not fleas.
Snow fleas are actually arthropods like spiders and scorpions and horseshoe crabs. They don’t look like any of those, but they are related. They also don’t use their legs to jump. They have a little part of their tail that is sort of like a spring. In fact, they are called springtails in some parts.
They don’t freeze in the winter. They make their own antifreeze. They are around all year round, but we tend not to see them much when they are laying on the ground. On snow, they stand out.
When you get a warm day, the snow fleas come to the surface, probably looking for food. Food, for these little critters, is pretty much any old organic matter laying on the ground which they help to break down.
So if you see a big bunch of snow fleas, don’t panic. They don’t bite, unless you are decaying organic matter, in which case you have bigger problems than a few snow fleas. The patches of black, hoping things on the snow have no interest in you. They are just hoping for spring to arrive.
We are still safe in winter. There may be bugs, or things that look like bugs, but they don’t want to bite us. We’re still safe for a few more weeks.
