Posted by:
wireptile
at Wed Feb 16 23:29:50 2011 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by wireptile ]
"Of Lice and Men"
Regarding Travis and his kind, Most mammals have one species of body louse. Hominids have 3 species-head, body (clothes) and pubic lice. It has always been assumed that human lice evolved from Chimp lice. According to a recent show on public TV, hominids lost their hair around 2-3 million years ago (mya). We know this because then, the hairless torso created a wasteland for our lice. Hominid body lice could only live on the head because that was where the hair was thickest, and so they became known as head lice. DNA Analysis of "human" pubic (crab) lice shows that their closest relatives are Gorilla body lice, not Hominid head lice, and that the two species of lice diverged at least 2 mya. There was vague speculation on how we ended up with Gorilla lice. That is how it is known that that is the time period that Hominids lost their body hair. DNA analysis of body (clothes) lice, which live in clothes, but feed on the wearers, shows that they diverged from head lice 170,000 years ago, suggesting that is the period in which hominids began wearing "clothing" and therefore were able to migrate from the tropics to temperate Europe. Not exactly a herp law matter, but I just thought some of you might find this interesting. Snake mites aren't everything!
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