Learning from Lice

As some of you know, the Northfield house has been struck by an infestation of these gorgeous creatures:



That’s right, lice.

While these parasites are (rightly) dreaded, I would also like to propose that there’s more to lice than meets the eye (or magnifying glass).

After some research, it seems lice are not as intelligent as I originally thought. They move only by crawling, and can only survive for a few hours (two, tops) without blood from a human host. Thus, they’re unlikely to spread by sharing common objects or furniture (sorry guys, we can no longer blame those Wendell Berry hippies for our outbreak…). And contrary to popular belief, “hippie” hair is actually a great defense against invaders of the louse kind. They prefer straight, clean hair… so dreadlocked folk are in luck. This is probably how I dodged the louse bullet, as I just started a no-poo regimen (google it/try it) and rarely brush my 24” locks to begin with.

Because lice transmission requires extensive human-to-human contact, they reveal a lot about our social fabric. The ability of lice to quickly infest across multiple groups reminds us what social creatures we humans are, with wide-spanning and intertwined networks. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect that we have exposed the STOGROW house as well as most of Larson by now. If one were to study human interaction and social networks in a completely inhumane way, they could inoculate one student with lice and… well, see where the little buggers go.

Transmission by touch tells us something qualitative about human interaction as well. This study offers insight on the evolutionary role lice play in actually encouraging certain types of human touch. The article posits that endearing gestures, particularly touching heads together, were evolutionarily beneficial behaviors because they encouraged the transmission of lice. According to Rozsa and Apari, the transfer of head lice is mutualistic in that humans with past exposure to head lice are less likely to suffer body-louse-borne disease. Past head lice survivors may have had greater immunity against the potent cocktail carried by some body lice, which historically included typhus, trench fever, relapsing fever, and the classical plague. By this study’s findings, we should be thanking each other for sharing the louse love (St. Paul, hit us up).

And with that, my curiosities about lice are satisfied for about a lifetime.
Be Well (and lice-free),
Britta