Do fleas hate garlic?

Summary

Eating garlic does not repel or control fleas. Other blood-sucking arthropods, including mosquitoes and ticks, also won’t be deterred by consuming garlic. Rubbing garlic cloves on skin does have a moderate repellent effect, but this is very unpleasant.

Details

Consuming Garlic as a Repellent

Garlic, Allium sativum, is often proclaimed as a universal repellent. It’s believed that eating garlic makes skin unpalatable to mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects. This view has been held since ancient times and is still held today. In China, garlic is consumed to allegedly repel insects. In South America, it’s hung around the neck. The lay community’s conviction in garlic’s ability to deter insects has prompted scientific research.

Flea Repellent

Using garlic as a flea control method has proven to be ineffective. There are no studies indicating that dietary supplementation of garlic has any efficacy in repelling or controlling fleas.

Tick Repellent

One study claimed that consuming garlic provided significant protection from tick bites. However, the accuracy of this study has been questioned and the results are regarded as exaggerated and dubious.

Mosquito Repellent

Ingesting garlic oil is most often claimed to repel mosquitoes. However, these claims are contradicted by scientific studies, as well as researchers’ common experience that individuals who eat garlic in quantity suffer from mosquitoes as badly as anyone else. A double-blind randomized trial provided conclusive evidence that consuming garlic does not repel mosquitoes.

Garlic as an Insecticide

Rubbing garlic cloves on skin does have a moderate repellent effect. However, this is an extremely unpleasant means of protecting oneself from bites. Garlic does in fact have some insecticidal properties. Notable compounds include allicin, geraniol, linalool, caffeic acid, and ferulic acid. Some commercial products include these garlic compounds and are certified for use against mites, nematodes, and mosquito larvae.

References