Talk:Oriental rat flea/Archive 1

unreliable reference with undoubtable evidence to medieval plague transmitted by fleas
We have a reference here to a book of James Fairley that is used to state that the Black Death in Ireland was undoubtedly transmitted by this flea. The author of the book seems not at all a plague historian (see https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-James-S-Fairley/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AJames%20S.%20Fairley), the book is not reviewed by any historians as far as I can find online, so I am rather sceptical of the evidence that Fairley could have presented on the topic of plague transmission.

I wonder how likely it is that Fairley has a historical source that is reliable and writes about plague transmitted by fleas. It has already been shown to be very hard, if not impossible to find sources from that time (14th century) describing the death of rats during plague epidemics, let alone the role of fleas. I am fairly happy to accept that plague might have come to Ireland on rats in boats carrying plague-infected fleas, but as to how the disease spread across Ireland, I would like to see a better reference here.

What is the procedure for removing a sourced reference from a webpage? I don't have access to the book itself (nor does the book seem to deal with plague, so it is not in my interest to buy it) so I cannot check the reference itself.

BorisVSchmid (talk) 18:36, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Removing that line in the main article for now. Boris V. Schmid (talk) 13:20, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Grain?
I read somewhere that the larvae of this flea can subsist on grain. Can someone else confirm this? Sumanuil (talk) 06:43, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Sudan or Egypt
Ok, first specimen, Sudan or Egypt? These edits:   are in question here. The sentence originally said Egypt, with a citation (London Natural History Museum) that is now dead. Youssef Ahmed Mo changed that to "Sudan" which I assumed to be vandalism because no edit summary and no source. Actually he got that from Charles Rothschild which does indeed say that, however the source for that says nothing of the kind. In fact it says nothing about 1901, 1903, Oriental rat fleas, Egypt, or Sudan. Given that he named it after an Egyptian pyramid (or its Egyptian owner) and not a Kushitic one I'm inclined to believe Egypt and not Sudan. However there aren't any sources for any of this. Invasive Spices (talk) 16:34, 6 June 2021 (UTC)