Do fleas also do circus?

Fleas are no longer familiar to city dwellers today, but back hundreds of years ago, fleas were found everywhere in urban and rural areas. They suck human blood and spread diseases, but they are not useless: Europeans, for example, found fun in fleas and started "flea circuses".

Fleas are a class of insects that specifically parasitize on hot-blooded animals such as birds and mammals, and only a few of them can suck human blood. The body length of adult fleas is generally less than 6 mm, but they can jump dozens of centimeters in one jump and jump onto people's clothes and hair. For thousands of years, they have been accompanied by humans, rich and poor, and they cannot escape their harassment.

In Europe, after experiencing the "Black Death" pandemic in the 14th century, people thought that bathing would catch the disease, and they generally did not dare to bathe, and fleas became more common. At that time, just in time for the great development of metallurgical technology in Europe, some creative blacksmiths made several elaborate miniature props in order to show off their skills, and used fleas as "models" to display in public, such as steel chains that can be tied to fleas ......By the end of the 16th century, people began to use these props to train fleas and make them perform for fun, and special "flea circuses" appeared. The fleas in the circus can perform many stunts for the audience, such as pulling a trolley, turning a wooden horse, walking a tightrope, and dancing ballet.

Due to the small size of the "actors" and the small scale of the performance, it is usually an artist who walks the streets and alleys with a suitcase, sets up a stall on the street, and more than a dozen people watch from the side. In many towns in Europe and the United States in the century, this flea circus can be seen. Even the fairy tale king Hans Christian Andersen wrote "The Flea and the Professor", in which the flea-taming artist was honored as a guest in the "Savage Country".

To this day, flea circus performances can still be seen.

Fleas and circuses are also related? Yes! There is still an incredible form of entertainment in Munich, Germany, – the flea circus.

In medieval Europe, this kind of entertainment was very popular, but now the German Matthews is the only one who still runs it. He uses ordinary fleas to perform many amazing feats, such as shooting, pulling carts, dancing in miniature costumes, and more. The performance relies on the flea's own strength and its ability to jump.

These fleas can move objects up to 20,000 times more than their own bodies. Since they are so tiny, the viewer has to use a magnifying glass to **. Matthews spends two weeks of the year in Munich putting on this unique show.

You'll need a magnifying glass to see them.

Let the fleas put on the show, it sounds a little incredible. The brains of fleas are not as big as salt grains, and the adult lifespan is only two or three months, how to train? It is true that fleas cannot follow human commands like monkeys and elephants, and training fleas is entirely based on their instincts.

Even more difficult and expensive than buying and transporting wild animals with less intelligence is training them to become actors and have them walk on stage and perform unconventional movements to entertain the audience. The performer does not need to give instructions to the animal, and when the flea "performs" kicking the ball, its action is actually to avoid the rolling ball, but it cannot jump high because of the thin thread tied to the neck, creating the illusion of kicking the ball; When playing a musical instrument, the flea tries to escape because of the glue, and its jump causes the instrument to make a sound.