Snow Fleas!

While walking in the pine grove a week ago, I noticed all these little black specks in the snow. I at first assumed they were bits of gravel or dirt. I soon realized they were moving when I looked closer, and then remembered my whole post about winter insects last year. Snow Fleas (Hypogastrura Nivicola).

Snow Fleas are not fleas are actaully NOT insects or fleas, and instead are something called springtails. Springtails are decomposers, eating lichen, dead wood and leaves, fungi, detritus, bacteria, animal feces, and really anything else it can find. You can find these on the snow on the floor of almost any local forest. I have even seen colonies of them around a rotting tree stump in my side yard. It would be a lot harder to notice them if they didnt hop so much. They hop when they think they are in danger, and it happens so fast that they look like they are disappearing. Realizing the whole forest floor you're walking on is covered with tiny bugs can be kind of gross and startling to some, but they can't harm humans in any way.

Some pet stores actually sell cups of springtails and people who own reptiles and amphibians actually pour them onto their pet's dirt/moss/substrate as a natural cleanup crew. They eat the animal's waste so you don't have to clean it up yourself.

Springtails survive the cold winter temperatures because of chemicals in their blood which prevents it from freezing. Snow fleas actually don't only come out during the winter, and live the exact same way during the other three seasons, hopping around on the ground, looking for food. The only reason you dont see them is because they blend in with the leaf litter, but stand out against the white snow.