Human Head Louse - article about Human Head Louse

The Human Head Louse Vs. Animal Louse

The Difference Between Human Head Louse and Animal Louse

Human head louse is a little oblong, brown in color and has all the six legs attached very close to its head. The legs are equipped with inverted claws specially designed for catching hair strands and moving along on it. They have very small heads, the majority of which forms the mouth. They feed on the human head by biting and then sucking blood from a microscopic incision.

The human head louse hates clean and dry scalps. It also cannot exist well at elevated temperatures. This is why it has been known that tribal people sit for grooming in the sun in the middle of the day. The excess heat usually disorients the lice and they rise to surface in their hope to find a way to escape, when they are caught and killed.

The human head louse is very dexterous at lying eggs, with the female louse capable of laying about 50 eggs per day. The eggs are brown in color and almost invisible on dark hair. You will find the eggs only if you carefully search for them, in specific favorite areas of the lice, like behind the ear, and at the nape of the neck. These are places which are difficult to observe, so instinctively these lice use them for procreation.

On the other hand, animal louse is almost brownish-red, they have a horizontally flat body and at first sight they may look like a small fruit fly. While the human head louse moves only by crawling on the hair of humans, animal lice walks on the skin of an animal. This answers why it has a flat shape; so that it can navigate easily in-between the maze of hair on the animal it lives upon.

There is one great difference between these two types of lice – the animal louse can jump just like a tick and disappear before it can be caught again. The human head louse cannot jump. Its only mode of escape is running on the hair and hiding in hard-to-reach spots on the head.

It is worth mentioning here that these lice cannot live outside their own environments, i.e. the human head louse can live only on the human head (and sometimes in the pubic area and underarm – but only on humans) while animal lice can only live on animals.

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