Can Fleas Live in Human Hair? (7 Quick Tips)

Flea bites on humans from cat fleas, dog fleas, rat fleas cause irritation, itching, pain, and distress – they’ll bite calves, ankles, lower legs, and feet. But are flea bites on the human scalp common? Can these pests create a permanent residence in your hair? So, can fleas live in human hair? 

• In summary, when you sleep with a pet, fleas can temporarily hide in dense or full frizzy human hair (like Remy human hair). This is common when they can’t find their preferred hosts like cats or dogs. 
• While female fleas have lower fertility inside the human hair, human blood is not preferred by fleas. Thus you won’t find flea eggs laid or developing to other stages in the flea cycle. 

However, chigoe or human fleas (found in tropical areas) will prefer human hosts. Human fleas will burrow into the human skin, suck blood, and lay eggs in their numbers. See the flea spray. 

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Details: Can Fleas Live in Human Hair? (7 Quick Tips) 

Usually, fleas won’t stay or live in human hair. But when humans sleep with pets (including cats and dogs), the fleas may jump off, at night, onto the human hair and clothes. 

The fleas jump onto the human scalp, where they’ll feed on your blood – a good blood meal despite not being like the pet’s blood meal. 

Pet’s blood meal allows the female fleas to lay eggs, and they hatch into the larvae, pupae, before progressing into adults, and thus exterminators concentrate on killing fleas on pets. 

So, you can control fleas in your yard or apartment using vacuum cleaning, laundering, and thoroughly washing the pet bedding and clothes. 

So, if the pet sleeps on your bed, the fleas may jump from the bed and land on the floor or carpets – try some of these best flea carpet powder – including targeting flea eggs and larvae. 

Fleas will be dislodged from their pet hosts during pet-grooming with tools like flea combs for cats and dog flea combs. Also, flea gets dislodged when the cats or dogs groom themselves. 

Fleas will mainly hop, hide, and bite humans (warm-blooded mammal) 2 to 7 times immediately; it emerges from the flea cocoon because they urgently need a blood meal and a host. 

How Do Fleas Jump into the Human Hair? 

Fleas have long hind legs shaped from jumping – about 13 inches horizontally and 7 inches vertically, which is the record coming only second to frog-hoppers. 

However, for the fleas to jump onto your head and hence the human hair – you’d require holding the cat or dog near the head or sleeping around where the bugs hide. 

Therefore, despite that fleas can jump high both vertically (about 7 inches) and horizontally, they can’t get to the head (and human hair) of a regular height human being from the ground. 

The regular flea’s jump being 6 inches will only get the bug to the ankle of an adult (and standing) human being. Therefore, you’ll find most flea bites are clustered around the ankles. 

Although fleas can crawl to good hiding places, they’ll not usually climb up from the human ankles to the pubic hair or even the head hair. 

Conclusion? Fleas will only get and hide in your human hair if you sleep or lay around flea-infested pets, including cats or dogs. This may also happen when you let flea-infested pets lay on your bed.

Signs That You Have Fleas in Your Hair?

1. Allergic Reactions

Some human beings are allergic (anaphylaxis) to flea-bites because their immune system tends to overreact, releasing excessive histamine. Signs include breathing issues, nausea, and swelling.

Humans may also experience hair loss, crusts (scabs), pustules (pus bumps), papules (bumps), and erythema (redness). The head may also become painful and sore due to flea bites – but the flea allergy is treatable. 

3. Red Bumps 

When fleas settle in your hair and bite your scalp, you may notice some red bumps. A unique identifying feature is that the red dots are clustered together.

Besides, these red-clustered bumps are the same ones you’ll find around your feet and ankles – but will happen on the head or scalp if you sleep near flea-infested cats or dogs.

3. Intense Itchiness 

Fleas bites on your head could also cause intense itching that also comes with major skin irritation. Severe cases would result in skin infection, skin reddening, and hair loss.

However, the head ditch’s intensity from the flea bites in the human hair varies from one person to another. This may be related to how allergic humans are to flea bites.

How to Treat Fleas in Human Hair? 

1. Wash with Shampoo 

Wash your hair with your regular shampoo to dislodge the fleas from your head. For this process, you’ll need to rub the shampoo on the hair roots and scalp gently.

Equally important is that you should get a way of catching or holding the fleas that may jump off your head and hair as you’re doing the shampoo washing.

2. Remove Flea Eggs

Sometimes fleas may even leave their eggs (can be confused with dandruff) on your hair, and thus you must eliminate them. The eggs will mainly be off-white or translucent in color and oval-shaped, looking like salt grains. 

Therefore, it’s also critical to flea treat the hair and the environment or yards around your house – flea bombs can help with a massive infestation. 

I would recommend using warm water plus baking soda – that you’ll spray on your hair. 

Another remedy would be using dish soap to kill the fleas for pets – particularly the lemon-scented models. However, avoid dish soap for cleaning your hair, head, or scalp. Rinse and dry the hair. 

3. Flea Shampoo with Tea-Tree Oil 

Further, I recommend you wash your head and hair using tea tree oil plus your regular shampoo to eliminate the fleas. However, you must use the tea tree oil in its diluted type. 

However, it’s challenging to get the correct and safe measurement for tea tree oil, and thus, it would be helpful to purchase the shampoo with tea tree oil that’s ready to use.