American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) - The Clinical Nurse Leader; American Association of Colleges of Nursing's White Paper on the Education and the Role of the Clinical Nurse Leader; American Association of Managed Care Nurses; American Board of Managed Care Nursing; AONE Institute for Leadership Research & Education
1 Female fleas cannot lay eggs until after their first blood meal and begin to lay eggs within 36-48 hours after that meal. 2  The female flea can lay 2,000 eggs in her lifetime.  The female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood daily.
Female fleas need to keep feeding on blood to ensure their metabolism stays in balance while they are laying eggs. Adults on a host animal can live for 133 days, but if they become dislodged they need to rapidly find a new host, or quickly hop back onto the original host. They die within four days of losing their host.