This show left the audience very curious precisely with this question: how to train insects to jump off trampolines, walk on tightropes and even be shot from cannons? It shouldn’t be easy! In Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the flea circus was most popular, many of them fled, leading their owners to spread posters offering fortunes to whoever found them. Unlike the fleas that infest animals such as rats, cats and dogs, the one that attacks humans was the only one that lent itself to training. As a result, the increase in personal hygiene in the 20th century almost eliminated the species and circuses went into decline. ]
That’s what the legends say. Get ready now, reader, to know the truth, as we are going to reveal one of the best kept secrets in history: there are no fleas in the flea circus! “Due to their short life cycle and difficulty in handling, it is highly unlikely that they can be trained for shows of this type”, says psychologist Antonio Motta Fagundes, Brazil’s leading specialist in training animals for TV and cinema. He’s right. Flea circuses are much more connected to magic and illusionism than to the domestication of insects. Some current shows in the US and Europe even use dead – or even live – fleas in certain numbers. But this is rare and they are never actually trained. “It’s all done with tricks, little mechanical devices, and by the presenter, who convinces the audience with his speech and body play”, says Márcio Corrêa, director of the Legião de Palhaços group, from Florianópolis, SC.
Márcio speaks with authority, as he stages what is perhaps the only flea circus in the country. He built everything himself, including the system of cords, rubber bands and water pumps that fuels the audience’s illusion. As people are relatively far from the stage, they never see the fleas, only their “trace” in the form of small devices that move. The power of suggestion is so great that many spectators swear they have seen the little animals. The finest flea circuses of the 18th and 19th centuries were built by Swiss watchmakers and are now worth tens of thousands of dollars at auction.
FLEA BOMB
The show: after offering the audience plastic caps to protect themselves, the presenter lights the fuse of the cannon that will fire the flea bomb. He then catches the tiny acrobat mid-air with a butterfly net.
The trick: the mini-cannon, prepared with gunpowder, really fires. Everything else is a game of scene
TRIPLE JUMP
The show: The lumbering flea bomb bounces hard on the seesaw, so its partner is propelled backwards, performing several somersaults in the air.
The trick: the seesaw moves through a system of rubber bands, activated by the presenter through a pedal under the table. He also pretends to trim the flea in his coat pocket.
TIGHTROPE
The show: the equilibrist flea walks a tightrope holding an umbrella. It better not fall as there is no safety net…
The trick: the umbrella, attached to the string, creates the illusion of a flea underneath. The string is much longer than the audience thinks and the presenter pulls its end under the table, making the parasol walk along the string.
DEATH DIVE
The show: In this somewhat dangerous act, the water flea leaps from a springboard, which is more than 200 times its height, performing pirouettes until it lands, with a crash, into a tub of water.
The trick: under the table, the presenter activates a water pump that shoots a small jet into the tub, as if a flea had really fallen in there
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