From: Scientific American Blog
By Emily Willingham |
February 14, 2011
Ponder the louse.
Consider its plural, lice. Try now not to scratch the multiple itches
that have just populated your head at the very thought of these
near-microscopic insects crawling around in that forest of hair
follicles, laying eggs, sucking blood, and generally creeping you out.
The
thing is, your head may not be the likeliest place to feel the itch.
After all, we’re home not only to the louse, but to lice, plural. As in
two genera of lice, and three different kinds. One of those, the pubic
louse, appears to trace back to contact between the Homo lineage and the gorilla, but more on that in a bit.
The
history of lice and men is a long, itchy story that intertwines
co-evolution not only with these blood-sucking little parasites but also
with the microbes they carry. In fact, as visceral as our reaction can
be to reading the "head lice"
note our little darlings bring home from school, the insects themselves
are nothing compared to the microbes they can harbor…and transmit to
us. The lice and the microbes have driven us to death, to peace, to
giving insects enemas. Yes, you read that right. They have, in short,
been our co-pilots—or is it our head pilots?—for as long as Homo sapiens have been around. MORE
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