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Sticker of Red poultry mite
Bug card No. 1126 of 1,500

Red poultry mite

Dermanyssus gallinae
Eats: BloodScorpions, ticks and friendsHouses and farms8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The red poultry mite is a teeny eight-legged creature, about as big as the dot at the end of a sentence. It is greyish white, but turns reddish brown after it drinks blood. It lives in hen houses and comes out at night to feed on chickens.

Fun fact: this one is not an insect. It is an arachnid with eight legs, a cousin of the spiders.
Lives in
Wherever people keep chickens, in hen houses and in bird nests
Length
0.8 to 1 mm (0.03 to 0.04 in)
Top speed
about 0.01 km/h (0.01 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Can bite or sting
It can bite people, and the bites itch, but it cannot live on people for long. If you keep chickens, ask a grown-up to keep the hen house clean.
What does it eat?
It drinks blood, mostly from chickens and other birds, usually at night. Sometimes it bites mammals and people too.
For real!Photo of Red poultry mite
Picture by Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Red poultry mite about 1 mm long (0.04 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)
6 of them in a row are as long as one grain of riceneeds 6 minutes to cross a dinner table

How big is Red poultry mite compared to YOU?

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

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is not an insect. Like spiders, it has eight legs.

2

In the daytime it hides in cracks away from the light, and at night it crawls out to feed.

3

From egg to adult can take only seven days, so there can soon be very many of them.

4

It can survive up to 10 months in an empty hen house without any chickens.

5

Some farmers use other tiny mites that hunt red mites to protect their hens.

you asked

Most asked questions about Red poultry mite

?Can red poultry mites bite humans?

Yes, they sometimes bite people and the bites itch, but they usually cannot stay on people for long.

?How big is a red poultry mite?

It is tiny, only about 0.75 to 1 millimetre long.

?How do you get rid of red mites?

Grown-ups keep the hen house very clean, wash it often and use special treatments made for chickens.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Dermanyssus gallinae
Group
Scorpions, ticks and friends
Family
Dermanyssidae
Classification
Arachnida > Mesostigmata > Dermanyssidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
Also known as
Red mite

Where the facts come from

  1. Dermanyssus gallinae (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Gilles San Martin from Namur, Belgium. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.

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