How far could you jump if you were as strong as a flea?
Most of the folks who answered this question put their guesses in terms of football fields - guess it's easiest to visualize. Thanks a bunch for all your cool answers!
Nikki (11) from North Pole, Alaska, Spencer (9) and Charles (11) from Marion, Indiana both said: "I bet I could jump 1 football field long."
We also had a number of anonymous football field guesses ranging from 1 to 40!
Katy (10) from Warren, Michigan said: about 80 yards.
Goran (12) from Vancouver, B.C., said: "If I were a flea I could jump 100 times my height."
Jason (13) from Spring, Texas said: 1 foot (That seems a little short... heck a real flea can almost do that!)
Drew (11) from Langly, B.C., said: 100 feet
Chelsie (10) from Reidsville, North Carolina said: " I could probably jump about 0.75 meters." (That's close to a yard)
Andrea (13) from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma said: "probably not very far only because all of your weight would be on the ground and a flea right this day can not pick you up and jump with you. (good thinking Andrea!)
Okay, now here's the answer according to BUGMAN:
According to Borror, DeLong and Triplehorn in their textbook, An Introduction to the Study of Insects (Saunders University Press, 1981),
Insects often perform...near-impossible feats of strength. It is not unusual for an insect to be able to lift 50 or more times its own weight, and some beetles rigged with a special harness have been found able to lift over 800 times their own weight; in comparison with such beetles, a man could lift some 60 tons (120,000 pounds!), and an elephant could lift a fair-sized building! When it comes to jumping, many insects put our best Olympic athletes to shame; many grasshoppers can easily jump a distance of 1 meter, which would be comparable to a man (or woman - obviously this text was written before the politically correct 90s!) broad-jumping the length of a football field, and a flea jumping several inches up in the air would be comparable to a man jumping over a 30-story building! (pg 4)
... and The 1990 Guinness Book of Records says,
The champion jumper among fleas is the common flea (Pulex irritans). In one American experiment carried out in 1910 a specimen allowed to leap at will performed a long jump of 330 mm (13 in) and a high jump of 197 mm (7.75 in). (pg 41)
so, let's do the math... after scouring our extensive piles of resources, the best estimate of flea length we could find was 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch. So let's take the large estimate ('cause that's more conservative). 1/8" is about 3 mm. So, a flea can jump about 110 times its length. Now, for example, if you are 5 feet tall (or long) and could jump 110 times your length, you could jump about 550 feet, which is about 183 yards or, nearly 2 football fields!
Of course, jumping far is only one of the many cool things fleas do. To find out more about these amazing insects, check out some cool books like Amazing Insects - A DK Inside Guide, or Spineless Wonders - Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World.
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