Head lice are only able to live up to 48 hours if they are taken away from the hair on the human head. This irritating and aggravating louse is strong and hearty.
It's tough to beat when living among the hairs of the head, but if you take it away from that source it makes it vulnerable.
Head lice start out white in color and are no bigger than the head on a pin. This egg takes anywhere from seven to nine days to hatch.
Once the egg hatches it is called a nymph. Then the nymph changes to a brown red color once it has eaten its first meal. Now that's disgusting!
Feeding on your blood, and growing and growing, the nymphs spend the first twelve days of life shedding its exoskeleton on three different occasions. The exoskeleton must be shed because of the expansive growth the nymph is experiencing.
Once twelve days have passed the young nymph becomes an adult, finds out its sex (sounds exciting!) and can then be officially called a head louse. Once this happens, new adult head lice can start to further infest your head by laying and fertilizing more eggs depending on their sex.
The female spends most of her days feeding, laying eggs, and spreading saliva all over the eggs in order to glue them firmly in place on the hair shaft.
On a good day the female louse may lay six to seven eggs and on a slow day perhaps only three or four. In her short little life span, of approximately 30 days, the female louse can lay a couple of hundred eggs.
But once mama has died off, believe me, all the little girl louse keep up the magic of feeding on your head, laying eggs, spreading saliva and then dying off, leaving more babies behind. And so the cycle continues.
Because of the habitat in which head lice resigned, they endure pathetic conditions and so it is rather amazing how they manage to live without getting mashed while you sleep or how they manage to keep from being washed down the drain during a shampoo.
So hats off to the head lice!
Yes, these little critters are definitely unwanted and most certainly uninvited, but you've got to give them credit for fighting so hard to live.
