Bug card No. 1001 of 4,939

Common booklouse

Liposcelis bostrychophila

Eats: Leftovers and dead things Other insectsHouses and farms6 legs

The common booklouse is a teeny tiny pale brown insect, only about 1 millimetre long, with no wings. It likes to live in kitchens, warehouses and anywhere dry food like flour and cereal is kept. Even though it is called a louse, it does not live on people.

Lives in

All over the world, in homes, grain stores and food factories

Length

1 mm (0.04 in)

Top speed

about 0.32 km/h (0.2 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Harmless to people. It does not bite, it just spoils dry food.

What does it eat?

It nibbles on stored dry food, especially cereals and grain. It has even been caught eating mosquito eggs in a lab.

Photo of Common booklouse — Picture by Walker, K.. CC BY 3.0 au, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

6 of them in a row are as long as one grain of ricecould run across a dinner table in 11 secondsmoves 89 times its own body length every second

How big is Common booklouse compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Common booklouse about 0.32 km/h (0.2 mph)

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

Almost all booklice of this kind are girls. The mothers can have babies without any fathers.

A male was not found until 2002, in Hawaii.

A female lays about 200 eggs in her life.

It can live up to two months without food.

Its babies look just like tiny grown-ups and are adults after about 40 days.

you asked

Most asked questions about Common booklouse

?Do booklice bite?

No. Booklice are harmless and do not bite people.

?How big is a booklouse?

About 1 millimetre long, smaller than a grain of rice.

?Why do I have booklice in my kitchen?

They like dry foods like cereal and flour, so they move in where food is stored.

Myth buster

Myth: Booklice are lice that live on people.

Truth: No. Booklice are not real lice. They live in dry food and dusty places and never live on people or pets.

For bug experts

Scientific name: Liposcelis bostrychophila
Group: Other insects
Family: Liposcelididae
Classification: Insecta > Psocodea > Liposcelididae
Lives on: Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania

Where the facts come from

Liposcelis bostrychophila (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
Picture by Walker, K.. CC BY 3.0 au, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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