Nice Lice Give Advice!
Mar 8th, 2007 | 8 responses
My first undergraduate major was in anthropology and I’m still interested in the field. Today’s New York Times: In Lice, Clues to Human Origin and Attire
One of the more embarrassing mysteries of human evolution is that people are host to no fewer than three kinds of louse while most species have just one.
Even bleaker for the human reputation, the pubic louse, which gets its dates and residence-swapping opportunities when its hosts are locked in intimate embrace, does not seem to be a true native of the human body. Its closest relative is the gorilla louse. (Don’t even think about it.)
Louse specialists now seem at last to have solved the question of how people came by their superabundance of fellow travelers. And in doing so they have shed light on the two major turning points in the history of fashion: when people lost their body hair, and when they first made clothing.
8 Responses to “Nice Lice Give Advice!”
It is daunting how many different parasites we are host to both outside AND inside. We are a traveling zoo.
When I eat I provide for a family of trillions.
An amusing and interesting story, Holly…thanks.
I bet they give lousy advice though.
Boooooo!
A fun statistic my gf, a molecular biologist, told me is that There are more bacteria cells than human cells inside the human body. We do weight more, but we are outnumbered.
Any advice on delausification?
Thanks for an interesting article.
[...] Following up on last week’s post (Nice Lice Give Advice!), today’s New York Times informs us that the Epic of Human Migration Is Carved in Parasites’ DNA: A human body is not the individual organism its proud owner may suppose but rather a walking zoo of microbes and parasites, each exploiting a special ecological niche in its comfortable, temperature-controlled conveyance. Some of these fellow travelers live so intimately with their hosts, biologists are finding, that they accompany them not just in space but also in time, passing from generation to generation for thousands of years. [...]
[...] Following up on last week’s post (Nice Lice Give Advice!), the New York Times informs us that the Epic of Human Migration Is Carved in Parasites’ DNA: A human body is not the individual organism its proud owner may suppose but rather a walking zoo of microbes and parasites, each exploiting a special ecological niche in its comfortable, temperature-controlled conveyance. Some of these fellow travelers live so intimately with their hosts, biologists are finding, that they accompany them not just in space but also in time, passing from generation to generation for thousands of years. [...]
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