Chigger Bites Where Do Chiggers Live? – Everything You Need To Know

Where Do Chiggers Live? – Everything You Need To Know

chigger bites

Chiggers are a common concern of people who love to travel around the depths of woods or even have beautiful gardens. However, no matter how tiny they look, they prove quite dangerous and damaging to human skin. Their bite gives painful rashes and itches to every victim which takes a lot of time to heal. So, everybody wants to avoid the places they are found.

Where Do Chiggers Live?

Chiggers are everywhere across the globe where there is a warm to hot climate. They easily spread from one person to another. Once you know where chiggers live, let us get into other issues? They will not survive under 60 degrees Fahrenheit and above 99 degrees Fahrenheit.

Keep yourself well covered when walking in thick vegetation. Wash your clothes, take a shower when you reach home, and apply anti-itching ointment if they bite. Their bites appear in clusters of red itchy swollen pimples and appear very close to each other. Do not scratch or the infection will become serious.

If you’re hiking, your perfect bet to avoid getting chigger bites would be using a bite relief stick and avoiding wandering off hiking trails. In this article, you can understand where chiggers live.

If you’re not hiking and want to avoid chiggers, try to stay away from vegetation that’s low to the ground because that’s where they will be.

Chiggers won’t bite in temperatures under 60 degrees Fahrenheit and are not found in areas above 99 degrees Fahrenheit.

How to Avoid Chiggers?

Above I talked more about where chiggers live. I want to go over how to avoid being bitten by chiggers in more detail.

You can start by wearing long pants, and high socks, and don’t wear open-toe shoes. Chiggers crawl up your legs to bite you. When you walk by any thick vegetation, they will attach themselves to your pants or any other articles of clothing they can grab onto.

As I said above, if you’re hiking, stay on the trails and if you need to walk through the woods or grass, try to avoid thick vegetation that’s low to the ground.

When you get home from being outdoors, you need to shower and wash your clothes immediately. Suppose you shower and scrub your skin it will scrub the chiggers right off of you. If you wash your clothes, it will wash the chiggers right out of your clothes, so Who can wear them again.

What to Do When Chiggers Bite?

Chigger bites will drive you crazy, and they keep biting for up to a day. You’re going to want to get rid of the chiggers as quickly as you can. After you get rid of the chigger, you can start healing the bites to reduce the itching.

Steps to follow a chigger bite:

  1. Wash your clothes: Washing your clothes will eliminate any chiggers that are still in your clothes, waiting to get close enough to your skin to feed.
  2. Take a shower: Chiggers stay on your body and will bite you multiple times in a small clustered area because they get bored of one spot. They love to change spots to bite but won’t move too far. Chiggers will usually stay on your skin between 4 days and a week. They will continue to bite you as long as you let them. Taking a shower will remove any fleas sitting on your skin. Just make sure you scrub yourself.
  3. Mend the bite: If you want to stop the itching, you should start treating the bites as soon as possible. If you couldn’t get rid of the chiggers still biting you, there’s another way. You can get rid of the chiggers by applying nail polish or rubbing alcohol to the bites to suffocate them. After suffocating the chiggers, you should apply an anti-itching ointment such as, which is highly effective.

Why Do Chiggers Bite?

Chiggers are the larva form of mites. Mites, as you may know, feed on skin. They are very closely related to ticks and spiders. They generally feed on human skin but will feed on any other creature that may wander near them.

If you don’t get rid of the chiggers, they will stay in your skin for up to a week before dropping off. When they finally drop off, they will leave small red swollen welts. These welts are what cause the severe itching that drives us crazy.

Because chiggers are the larva form of mites, they don’t just feed on the skin but instead feed on the flesh of their host. This is the only time during the mite life cycle that they will feed on live humans.

Cycle chiggers have 6 legs instead of the 8 legs that an adult mite will have during this life. This is the easiest way to tell the difference between chiggers and adult mites.

Calling the welts “bites” can be somewhat misleading. Chiggers don’t actually bite you. Instead, they burrow into your skin to form a hole in the softer tissue underneath. When they finally get to the softer skin underneath, they inject an enzyme that helps break and liquefy skin cells. They then begin to feed for up to a week.

What Do Chigger Bites Look Like?

I understand that above I said chiggers don’t actually bite you. For now, though, let’s call them bites because that’s exactly what they look like.

Chigger bites are small red welts that form on your skin. Suppose the bites are in small tight clusters where the chiggers have been. They like to change spots when on a host, so they tend to move around a lot. They don’t go very far, though, so the bites are really close together.

The bites are small and swollen, looking very similar to pimples. Symptoms appear a few hours after the bite, so as soon as you start itching, try to get rid of them as quickly as possible to keep from getting more bites.

You check more chigger bites pictures for more information.

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Health Risks of Chiggers Bite

Chiggers don’t carry diseases, unlike their relative, the tick. Because chiggers don’t actually feed on blood, you don’t have to worry about transmitting diseases. The only thing you have to worry about is the same thing you have to worry about with any insect bites.

Do not scratch! Scratching the bites can lead to infection, and that’s where things can get dangerous. If your bite is beginning to look infected, see a healthcare professional immediately.

Closing Thoughts

Chiggers don’t carry diseases, unlike their relative, the tick. Because chiggers don’t actually feed on blood, you don’t have to worry about transmitting diseases. The only thing you have to worry about is the same thing you have to worry about with any insect bites.

Do not scratch! Scratching the bites can lead to infection, and that’s where things can get dangerous. If your bite is beginning to look infected, see a healthcare professional immediately.

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