Can fleas live in your hair?


Dave Campbell

Fleas cause a lot of stress in our pets, from dogs to cats. These small annoying insects are a menace, even irritating for you, and occasionally, you find a flea on human.

If you have an infestation of fleas at home, then you will start itching from flea bites, leaving you with hives. However, a big concern is that humans can get fleas in their hair as it lives on your pets.

How do you know if you have fleas in your hair? Here we examine whether fleas can live in human hair similar to dogs and cats.

Can Fleas Get into Human Hair?

Yes, it is possible to get fleas in human hair. However, you need to hold or lie down with a flea-invested pet for this to happen. While the fleas can jump vast distances, the distance remains small when it comes to human terms. The most common type of bug is the cat flea and can leap horizontally up to eight-inches.

According to a study done, the longest leap of the pest was 19-inches but rarely found. An adult flea measure ⅛-inches long and can leap an impressive distance around 160 times their length. When it comes to how high they can jump, it is 13-inches vertically. On the other hand, recent studies found this not to true.

The average height of the jump is 6-inches, with the highest recorded at 7.9-inches.

Fleas Do Not Just Leap Up To Your Hair

Fleas cannot leap into your hair when on the ground, even when you are sitting on the floor. The fleas are only capable of reaching your ankle. That is why you find most of the flea bites around your ankle area.

Fleas do not remain your body and take a quick feed and leaves. Now, can a flea climb up to your hair? The bug can climb from the flea egg from day one out of their cocoons and hiding place to reach a host.

When in your home, the fleas climbs up fibers from the carpet, and the same applies outdoors to find their way up grass.

Fleas in Human Hair

They do not climb up your body to hide in your hair, and the same applies to your pubic area if you were wondering about it. Once the bug finds bare skin, they take a nibble, feed for a while, and move on.

The only way the insect can get in your hair is if your cat or dog infested and lies close to your head, sleeping on the bed. The same applies if you lay on the carpet and infested with fleas. Therefore, fleas do not specifically head to you to live there.

Will Fleas Make Human Hair Their Home?

Once an adult flea finds a cozy host, it will remain there to live. Neither do fleas in humans leave unless dislodged when grooming or forced to go away using a repellent.

The pest will take any opportunity it finds to feed on warm-blooded mammals, including humans.

While the flea has a preferred host, where they live, and breed, such as dogs and cats, the human is not one of the preferred hosts. When sharing your environment with the bug, you will get bitten when another host is not around.

Once the pest emerges from the flea eggs, it needs to feed. Therefore, if your foot comes close, it will leap on board for its first feed.

The insect is not fussy as long as it can get food, and we are warm-blooded mammals and will leave when done. When landing on you, it will give up to three bites before departing. The bug feeds on blood for seven minutes at a time if undisturbed.

For this reason, if you are concerned about a flea on humans residing in the hair when reaching it, it is highly unlikely.

The Human Fleas

The fleas live on packed fur, and human hair is not the same. The only flea known to live in hair is the human fleas but very rare. You find human with fleas in tropical areas and adapt to live on humans.

The flea burrows into the skin where it feeds and lays flea eggs. The only time you may find the bug on a human is if there is a presence of frizzy hair or matted beard. The insect will feed and may not find its way out.

How Long Can Fleas Live on Humans?

We are not ideal hosts for the bug to lay eggs or have fleas in your hair. While it gets a steady diet from the blood, it cannot survive to breed and reproduce on human blood alone.

A female flea needs continuous feeding on blood before they start laying eggs. After the insect lay eggs, the flea needs to feed to keep the demanding process going.

If the female gets access to human blood, fertility becomes stunted, and the likeliness of laying eggs in your hair will not happen.

When living on your pets, they can lay up to 30 eggs every day. If the insect does manage to get into your hair or beard, it will feed and move on. Your blood will not nourish them enough to become fertile for breeding.

How Do I Get Rid of Fleas in My Hair?

While it is unusual for fleas to spend a long time on you, just the thought of having one in your hair leaves you with itching all over. The only time you may find the bug looking for a host such as humans is when you have an infestation of fleas, and there is not pet available to become the host.

For this reason, you need to make sure to keep personal hygiene and give your house a thorough home treatment to get rid of fleas. If you have dreadlocks, dense or thick hair, and beard, you need to keep it combed and clean. You can tie your hair up tight in a bun preventing the flea of being stuck in it.

You can sue strong smelling shampoos such as rosemary, eucalyptus, or tea tree oil as it is an excellent flea repellent. Tea tree oil shampoo is a perfect option as the properties in the herb kill and repels the bug.

Now, if you do have a furry friend in the home, they too are suffering. It helps if you treated them and your house to eradicate the flea population.

It helps if you look at your carpets, wood floor, and cracks as the flea do not remain on their host and fall from the hair to the ground. Therefore, you need to get rid of the flea eggs and different life cycles from the flea in the home.

Cleaning the Home

The most effective way to rid the home of fleas is to give it fumigation if invested. Another way is to vacuum the whole house to get rid of the larvae, eggs, and adult fleas. You will need to do this for a couple of days and remove your bedding, pet bedding, cushion covers, etc. to wash it at a high temperature to kill the infestation.

Using a steam cleaner is a sure-fire way to get rid of fleas from furniture to the carpet removing all life cycles brewing in the home. Other effective ways to rid of fleas is using baking soda sprinkled directly onto the mat and penetrating it into the fibers by sweeping the powder side-to-side utilizing a broom. The baking soda dehydrates the flea and the eggs. Leave it overnight and vacuum it up the next day.

The same applies to use salt using the same method, but make sure to clean your vacuum thoroughly to prevent it from rusting. On the other hand, you can leave a flea trap using a bowl with warm water with a few drops of dish soap on the floor overnight. The mixture works like glue to trap fleas, and in the morning, you empty the mix and wash the bowl.

Time to Treat Your Pets for Fleas

There are many ways to treat your dog for fleas using natural remedies instead of chemicals. You can find certain essential oils that make excellent repellents for fleas. You can take a spray bottle, dilute a couple of drops of essential oil into one cup of water, and spray it on your pet’s coat.

Some of these essential oils are eucalyptus, citronella, tree oil, rosemary, and peppermint oil. The important thing’s to remember that tree oil is toxic to pets, and you need to dilute it 1% to 1% and best to confirm the safety of each essential oil before use.

Using tea tree oil is one of the best solutions available. You can speak to your vet or browse through the petmd.com to find out what works best.

Cleaning the Backyard

If your dog or cat has a flea infestation, it is coming from the yard, and natural remedies work the best. Try to keep the garden as bare as possible to prevent the fleas from hiding in the hedges and bushes.

Remove dead leaves, mulch, and twigs letting in sunlight to your backyard. Furthermore, you can add the Steinerma Carpocapsea nematode to the garden as it thrives on fleas and plant repelling plants.

These plants are lavender, spearmint, pennyroyal, and chrysanthemums.

Final Note on Using Essential Oils

As you can see, the likeliness of having a flea living in your hair is scarce. What is annoying is the flea bites you need to sit with. The important thing is to take care of the flea infestation from your pet right through to the home and yard.

Before using an essential oil like tea tree oil on your dog, it helps to test a small amount near your pet to see how they react. For a natural way to keep cat fleas away from your pet, you can use cedar oil spray on the fur.

The oil is non-toxic, and you only need a few drops on the cat’s collar to help keep the flea away. We hope that the information provided enables you to get the fleas under control.

Dave Campbell

I'm Dave Campbell and the owner of deadpestz.com. You can read more about me and my background on my About Me page.

Recent Posts

Dead Pestz