Itchy and Scratchy

Why, you lousy nitpicking… a WNYC piece on Halloween as the prime season for headlice — all those wigs — had me thinking in the shower this morning. Lice are one of those animals that tend to cause hysteria, but a case of headlice in this day and age really seems more of a bother than anything else. Now that typhus and other lice-borne diseases are under control, the affliction is more wrapped up in the cultural and psychological: after all, one of the ways we in the bourgeoisie make distinctions between ourselves and others is by our notion of cleanliness.

Of course, I can talk because I’ve never had the displeasure, and I don’t have kids. But being unliced makes me an anomaly in human history. Two million years of hominid/lice interaction can’t be wrong! Our lice, unsurprisingly, are related to gorilla lice. However, we humans do have this distinction: we’re the only mammal species with more than one associated lice species; in fact, we have three to call our own: head, body, pubic (the randy teenager’s “crabs”). These lice separated out from one species as we lost body hair; like island species, they differentiated in the isolated thatches.

There are over 3000 species of lice, living off of avian and (most) mammal species. The curious egg-laying mammals (the platypus and the four species of Echidnas) miss out on the fun.

(By the way, did you know the Supreme Court, which I’ve taken to calling the Corporate Supremacist Court in honor of the five corporate toadies on it, is taking up a case about whether you can yell “Bedbug!” on a crowed subway car? Judge Antonin Sharia has already noted that the Founders were crawling with parasites, and so, as an Originalist, he is, too.)