The life of head lice

Head lice have been around for many, many years, colonizing the heads of humans around the globe, but how do they live their lives in the hair of a human.

The creation of life

When a female head louse moves to new nesting ground (a new human head) they lay eggs about a centimeter away from the scalp. The female manages to keep the eggs firm on the hair, close to the scalp by using a substance they make that has glue like qualities.

Once the eggs have incubated, which is normally anywhere between seven and nine days, the eggs will hatch and the life of a head louse will begin. The newborn head louse is called a nymph.

Start out in life

The nymph is white in color, almost transparent, until it takes its first feed on the human blood by biting into the skin of the scalp, even then it will just look like a tiny red dot about half a millimeter in length.

The nymph is a smaller version of an adult and looks like an extremely tiny ant, although the head lice have longer front legs for grasping hair.

The nymph stays a child for twelve days; in these twelve days the nymph will follow the metamorphosis process three times, shedding its exoskeleton on each occasion. After each stage of metamorphosis the nymph becomes larger on it’s way to becoming a fully matured adult.

Its not until the nymph reaches adult hood that the sex of the head louse is apparent.

Adult hood

When the nymph reaches adult hood the sex is determined and its mature adult life can begin.

The adult female is normally slightly bigger than the male and a fully-grown adult head louse grows no bigger than a sesame seed. The average lifespan of an adult louse is between twenty-eight and thirty days.

The female louse can lay between three and six or seven eggs a day which means in its lifetime female head lice are capable of laying 210 eggs each.

Adult head lice, like the nymph feed on the blood of their host by biting into the scalp and feeding on the blood in the skin.

Sometimes adult head lice can fall off their host, this is due to hair growth and the fact that we shed hair every day. If a head louse falls off the human host they generally die within two days although in this time female head lice may still lay eggs on surfaces that resemble human hair, like teddy bears and woolen rugs which gives possibilities of the cycle being able to start again through a different host being found.

It is not well known that a fully grown adult head louse can run very fast, a lot faster than we realize, this means that should they fall off a human host there is every possibility that the louse could find their way onto another human quite quickly and without the unsuspecting victim realizing they have a guest.

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