Can Fleas Eat Human Hair?

While it’s unlikely that fleas would eat human hair, they do bite humans. They can enter human hair through hair of a dog or cat that has infected it. The fleas are usually not a serious threat to humans and cannot complete their life cycle on them. You may have also come into contact with infected pet hair if you sleep near them or squeeze their legs.

To get rid of fleas, the first step is to soak in a warm bath. The water should be warm enough for human hair, but not so hot that it hurts your skin. In a standard bathtub, 1 cup of dish soap and a half-cup of lemon extract will kill flea larvae. It’s important to soak in the bath for half an hour. If the water is too hot, you can reheat it for a short period of time. After that, you can apply a standard shampoo and leave it in the bath.

While most common flea species don’t feed on humans, some of them do. One species, the Pulex irritant, lives in human hair. Other flea species live in dog hair and can hitchhike through it to another animal. These insects can easily be transported from dog to dog through human hair, and they can infect other pets.