Body lice: features of their appearance and lifestyle

Body lice are quite specific parasites. Generally speaking, they do not even belong to a separate species, but are merely an evolutionary form of head lice, which have changed their habits and lifestyle only during the short period that people dressed in clothing live on Earth.

Body lice can not live in the hair - their legs are not adapted for this, and therefore, they do not usually linger directly on a person’s head. But they managed to perfectly adapt to dwelling in clothes - in the folds of it, between the seams, in the doorways and pockets - confidently clinging to the fabric itself.

In general, a clothes louse is a parasite that lives in clothes. Here, louses have several advantages: they have more space for food, they are safer than on the head, and in more comfortable conditions in general.Still, under the clothes a person maintains a more stable microclimate than on the head. But there is such an adaptation to parasitism on clothes and its shortcomings, which we will discuss below.

 

What do louses look like?

Body lice looks very similar to head. These are small insects with a body length of about 3-4 mm, whitish or grayish-yellow in color with a characteristic slightly elongated abdomen. The photo shows a clothes louse with a significant increase under the microscope:

Body lice do not have wings, which makes it easier for them to move in the hair. On the other hand, because of this feature, they are not able to easily and quickly move between their masters.

In the photo - louses on the fabric:

And in the next photo you can clearly see how the louses look after the blood is pumped:

On a note

An adult body louse, especially after being saturated with blood, can be confused with a flea, as its belly darkens and swells a little. However, lice can not jump, and if the parasites from the place of bites just crawl away, it is exactly lice. In the photo - a clothes louse at the site of the bite.

Worm lice larvae differ from adult insects only in size - they reach a length from half a millimeter to 1.5-2 mm.During growth, they molt three times, and then turn into an adult insect.

Below in the photo you can see what a clothes louse looks like at the larva stage:

It is interesting

The larva is the only stage of lice development that immediately follows the egg. The larva after the first molt is called a nymph.

The lice eggs are called nits. They are fastened to clothes with a special secret, and it is very difficult to mechanically tear them away from them. Each such egg has a slightly elongated shape and a length of about 0.5 mm. Usually nits of lice can be quite difficult to visually detect on clothes.

Lice on human body well distinguished from other parasites. Bed bugs are much larger and have a darker color, fleas are high and jump far, and ticks have 8 paws well (there are only 6 lice). Is that the smallest larvae of bedbugs can be confused with lice, but alone (without the simultaneous presence of large adult individuals) such larvae are rare, and almost never crawl under the clothes.

 

Features of biology and nutrition of parasites

Body lice are typical hematophagous, their only food is human blood. At the same time, they differ from most other parasites in that they prefer to live on the human body or in close proximity to it.

Head and pubic lice for a permanent stay near the source of food have learned to cling to the hair, and therefore live and bite mainly in the hairy part of the body. Body lice most of the time is spent on the inside of the linen, only for food, going over to the human body. For this they are also called body lice, as well as linen lice.

In the photo below you can see the look of body lice, drunk of blood:

It is interesting

As noted above, head and body lice are different forms of the same species. Under natural conditions, even on the body of one person, they usually do not meet with each other (after all, they are divided purely territorially), but under experimental conditions they intersect and produce viable offspring. Moreover, the offspring itself has more signs of head lice, as the main form.

Body lice are spent most of the time between seams, folds and ruffles of clothing. The photo shows the accumulation of parasites on a synthetic insulation:

Lice avoid shiny, silk and satin clothes, like woolen and cotton fabrics.

It is necessary to eat these insects at least 3-4 times a day, so the lice on the body are regularly and constantly. However, for the same reason, insects are forced to parasitize only on those people who rarely or never change clothes at all - if the clothes hang in the closet for 4-5 days, the clothes louse will not be able to get to food and will die of starvation.

This determines the contingent of victims of lice - vagrants, beggars, refugees, soldiers in the war, who can not regularly change clothes; the lice in their underwear find the perfect haven. People who are constantly washing the body and having at least two changes of linen per week, louses cannot live. In this they lose head lice.

Breed linen lice it is in clothes. Here, in complete safety, nits develop, and the larvae after leaving the eggs begin to live the same way of life as adult insects.

The optimal temperature for habitat and reproduction of body lice: + 30-33 ° C. At a temperature of about + 15 ° C, the development of their nits stops, and at temperatures below minus 13 ° C and above + 60 ° C, the parasites die.This feature of the biology of lice allows you to get rid of them by non-chemical methods, for example, by simply washing clothes in hot water or freezing clothes.

 

Lice bites and their symptoms

Biting body lice - this, in fact, is one of the main problems caused by these parasites. When lice bite the body, a person may develop allergic reactions, severe itching, rashes and spots on the skin, and if the bites are too heavy, ulcers, boils, and even pyoderma.

The picture below shows typical body lice bites. They are quite similar to flea bites, but are distinguished by the absence of noticeable chains of several bites, which are characteristic of bedbugs and flea bites:

For lice is characterized by the absence of a long trunk for a bite, and therefore they are forced to immerse in the skin of the head. Because of this, the hole in the center of the bite is relatively large. The photo below shows a louse during a bite:

It is precisely by the presence of superficial skin lesions that body lice bites easily differ from scabies — with the last bites themselves, but there is a similar itch. In the photo below - irritation from scabies, well distinguished from that with pediculosis:

Body lice bite the body mainly in the lumbar region, buttocks, sides, neck, underarms, and on the thighs. In the hairy part of the body, they prefer not to bite.

The bites of lice cause a characteristic complex of symptoms, called in medicine lacy or lice and attributable to typical parasitic diseases.

The characteristic symptoms of the appearance of lice are:

• bites, usually healing within 3-4 days
• itching on the body, both in the area of ​​bites and near them
• manifestation of an allergic reaction, from rash to generalized symptoms - fever, nausea, digestive disorders, headaches
• the appearance of blue spots of small size on the skin
• pustular rash
• nervous disorders due to constant itching.

Usually, persons infected with body lice do not detect the parasites themselves, but they first feel these symptoms. It is very important to take measures to kill insects in time to prevent the appearance of boils at the site of bites and the development of purulent ulcers.

Typical symptoms of lice infestation are not the worst thing that can happen after the appearance of these parasites. It is the woolen form of lice that is most often the carrier of typhus and relapsing fever pathogens. - diseases, the epidemics of which in the past claimed thousands of lives in wars and in poor areas of large cities. Today, outbreaks of these diseases appear predominantly only in the countries of Asia and Africa, and they are associated mainly with lice.

 

How are body lice transmitted?

Despite immobility, body lice can spread quite effectively between people. As a rule, they are transmitted by close contact of an infected and healthy person, as well as by using someone else’s clothing. This usually occurs in:

• overnight places homeless
• refugee camps, natural disaster shelters
• trenches and tents during hostilities
• kindergartens and schools
• public transport
• saunas and public baths
• in hiking trips
• children's holiday camps
• dirty cheap hotels.

On a note

Body lice can survive in the water for 2 days, and therefore they can in exceptional cases be passed by water even in open water bodies. Such cases were recorded in India and Bangladesh.

By and large, any place where people can gather can be a source of lice infestation. However, the easiest way to transfer them is when people share clothing and underwear.

 

Fight against lice and treatment of lice

Get rid of lice is not so difficult, and with the right approach, you can do it literally in one day.

The easiest way is to contact the health service or special detention center. The public there, of course, can confuse even the most notorious optimist, but the means and methods of treatment there are so powerful that they can bring out lice in just a few hours.

Get rid of body lice can be at home. To combat them you need:

• Remove all clothes, load them into a washing machine, add any modern remedy for body lice, and in the absence of such, vinegar or tar soap - and wash things at the highest possible temperature. In the ideal case, things should be boiled or dry-cleaned for processing in a steam bath.
• Thoroughly bathe, wash the body with a pediculicidal cream or shampoo, keep the agent on the body for half an hour, then rinse it thoroughly.
• Dress up clean clothes that were stored in a closet or were weathered on the street for at least two weeks.

It is desirable after this change bed linen. You can not put on the field of infection untreated clothing.

The treatment of body lice bites consists of treating them with alcohol lotions, balms such as "Rescuer", means "asterisk". In the presence of allergic reactions, symptomatic treatment is applied (headache medications, painkillers, decongestants) and antihistamines.

It is important to remember that it is always more difficult to deal with body lice and treat the effects of their bites than to avoid infection from the beginning. therefore for the prevention of pediculosis Avoid places where lice can become infected, not contact with strangers and untidy people, not spend the night in doubtful places, use only their hygiene items and clothing, teach children to follow the rules of hygiene and sanitation.

Under these conditions, even in difficult life situations, it is possible to avoid lice infestation and never get to know pediculosis.

Be healthy!

 

Interesting video: where lice come from and how to deal with it

 

And this is how pubic lice look on eyelashes: unique frames