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The Coevolution of Lice & Their Hosts
eldavojohn writes "It might be an uncomfortable subject but parasites are an interesting subject when it comes to evolution. Ever wonder if pocket gophers have lice? Well, they do. And most interesting of all is the evolution of these lice mirroring the evolution of gophers. To study the genes of lice may shed just as much light on evolutionary trees as studying the genes of the actual host the lice has evolved to. The most unsettling result from these studies is that human head lice and human pubic lice (crabs) vary so greatly that they are in two separate genera. There were similarities between our pubic lice and the lice found on gorillas. Scientists came to the conclusion, which they published today in BMC Biology, is just as striking as their earlier one about head lice. But it is hardly the same. We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas."
Did anyone else read that line and think that this was article could have some link to the Monkey's Uncle (proto chimp/proto human interbreeding) story from a while ago on slashdot?
Afraid not, TFA states:Anyway, best article linked from
I'm going to wonder whether there were savanna gorillas or deep Forest hominids all night now
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
There were similarities between our pubic lice and the lice found on gorillas.
Look, I don't know what these scientists have been doing with the gorillas in this study, but this seems like evidence of *something*.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's not that humans got crabs from gorillas. One human did. Skeezy McTarzan.
Start a happiness pandemic
We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas." Just.... Dude.
I heard somewhere and I believe it to be true that African Americans hair has a oval shape instead of round. For this reason the lice cant grab on, and they don't have lice problems.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I remember something from my days of getting an anthropology degree where some scientists was trying to guess the approximate date when humans first started wearing clothing. Tools made from bone and rock last a long time, so you can easily get a good idea of when people started making new types of tools. But stuff like clothing, rope, or weaving rots away pretty quickly, so finding them in archaeological digs is pretty rare.
IIRC, there are two types of lice or fleas. One kind lived on human skin and hair, and the other preferred clothing and blankets and lived only in artificial fabrics. The scientists were trying to see when the fabric-preferring bugs diverged from a common ancestor by examining the genetics. Really clever!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Hate to be the naysayer of the group, but this seems pretty speculative to me. The connection between the gorilla strain of lice and the human head lice is an interesting observation, but that doesn't necessarily mean all that was claimed. I'm not dismissing the theory, but there is not enough evidence to sell me on this one. Does the premise sound good? Yes, but that is hardly enough to justify the evolutionary links between lice and the various branches of primates.
Maybe if this sig is witty or clever enough, someone will love me...
To be perfectly honest ... um, let me think about this ... no.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Huh huh. You said.. "pocket gopher".
Where is the link to Lawyers ?? I would have thought that all parasites were geneticaly related?
"We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas."
#10. Speak for yourself, professor.
#9. "coyote-ugly", move over...
#8. Shhh... Hear that? I think Dave Attell's head just exploded.
#7. Why is the waiting room empty? All I said was we...
#6. "Scratch-a while you can, monkey-boy!"
#5. Next on Springer...
#4. Time to bring the crab-infested brass monkeys in off the back porch, Radar.
#3. Yes, you heard me right, I need to get into those crabs' genes.
#2. Let's say we ask Jocelyn Elders to weigh in on this one.
and #1... Well I'll be a monkey's uncle, and a mighty itchy one at that.
(N.B., I know gorillas are apes not monkeys, so save the posting effort, it's just a freaking joke...)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
From the article: "And then there is the matter of where the lice live. Today, lice live on little islands of hair on an ocean of hairless human skin. They are clearly adapted to our relatively hairless bodies. The authors suggest that their results may mean that hominids were already losing hair 3.3 million years ago. The gorilla lice needed an empty ecological niche--pubic hair--that they could occupy in order to survive. If hominids had full-body hair, the lice that already lived on it might have been able to outcompete an invader."
In my opinion this is one of the most interesting aspects of this research - being able to date when we started becoming hairless. It's always been a puzzle why we are relatively hairless compared to the other great apes, and I would guess that being able to put some time constraints on it is a step toward understanding how this happened.
think twice about who you share your brain bucket with.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The coevolution of parasites and their hosts is admirably exemplified by the hordes of clueness do-nothing know-nothings who rush to offer hilariously foolish comments on slashdot.
Update:
If your suit happens to have a gorilla or crab logo instead of normal lice, then please burn yourself immediately. If not, it will burn you.
The all powerful one is known to be against that nasty bahaviour known as "s*x" (except when used to go forth and multiply of course). He produced pubic lice as a punishment for those engaging in this disgusting activity.
We can test this. Have gay sex with a dirty ape while gambling, drinking, and cussing and see if you get struck by lighting and hurricanes more often then those having Brady-Bunch-Mormon-style relationships.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh,... and this is NOT a "In Soviet Russia" joke. :-P
I can imagine one of two scenarios:
1. Humans evolved from the same primates as gorillas, and the lice just stuck with us the whole time.
2. Some human had sex with a gorilla.
I just want to know why the christians want to believe number 2 over number 1.
Conclusion:
henry -- the human evolution news relay
I'll let you guys know tomorrow. When I'm RID of it!!
haha
S-
Sigh. Another sheep argument with Irreducible Complexity. None of the candidates for this kind of "Gap" theology have stood up to scientific analysis. Other sheep have argued in a similar manner about the eye, the flagella, etc.
I wish Richard Dawkins was made required reading for all the misguided lambs every Saturday night before churchday.
Hand in there my friend, there is still hope. You can be saved.
Just conducting a little more "research"...
o n.gif
http://www.lessonsforhope.org/images/cartoon_lars
Help Jodie Foster get RID of them!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
When my SO wonders where the crabs came from, I can mumble, "Ah, fucking gorillas."
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I prefer to think of it as God giving us little friends so we'll never be lonely.
That was the only thing you said that made sense
"going forth and multiplying" only works when one tries to multiply with one's own species?
Tech Public Policy stuff
I wish people would stop confusing "hominid" with "human". Gorillas are hominids as well.
...in his pathetic attempts to use powerpoint as a subliminal messaging system: "PARASITES RULE THE WORLD" but seriously, the co-evolution of parasitic invertebrates and higher species (coupled with the much higher reproduction rate of the parasites) in some cases can be a greater natural selection pressure than the classic predator/prey relationship that people always seem to think of first.
There were similarities between our pubic lice and the lice found on gorillas. Sorry, that incident at the zoo was reduced to 'Just following too close.'
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Not only am I a monkey's uncle, I got his crabs too!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Get your lice off me, you damn dirty ape!
More Twoson than Cupertino
I didn't think it was possible, but after doing this progrm http://www.coloncleanse-blog.com/ what a shock! The worms were coming out within weeks.. You can't belive it untill you see it!
Hey, mister, speak for yourself!!!
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Indigenous American Indians used to catch horses by outrunning them, until the horse was too tired to run anymore. If one trains a horse to run long distances, then I don't know, but a typical wild horse is not much of a match against a determined, trained human in terms of distance.
So I guess both the parent and grandparent messages are correct.
..........FULL STOP.
"an artifact is something made by human hands."
And human hands never "made" cotton or wool - these occur naturally, and existed before there were humans. Polyester, on the other hand, is artificial.
Reread my original post - you're confusing the material with the things made of the material. Its quite clear that I'm talking about the material or substance from which clothing is made. Fabrics can be made from cotton or wool or other naturally-occuring objects, or from polyester, which didn't exist until we made it.
Also, an artifact isn't necessarily something made with human hands, and also, you're confabulating artifact and article.
What do you mean "our pubic lice"?
This is Slashdot, most of us haven't had the opportunity to get public lice, you insensitive clod!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
"The gorilla lice needed an empty ecological niche--pubic hair--that they could occupy in order to survive. If hominids had full-body hair, the lice that already lived on it might have been able to outcompete an invader."
Someone jump in and tell me how this could possibly happen. We lost our body hair, but not our crotch, underarm or head hair. So the lice we were carrying before losing that hair...
A. Hated our pubic reagions and head.
B. were unable to adapt to those different hairs, as we lost our hair.
C. Were shocked and died the day every darn human dropped 90% of their hair, leaving only the pubic and head places available for colonization.
No. We had lice before we lost that hair, and we had lice after. There's a mistake here. This louse must have out-competed or bred together with the one we had.
O.K. if you take the WoW perspective on that it takes 300 Nagas to get 1 Naga Claw. When you get thirty claws, you take them to the elder in Sha laka ah, and he gives you a quest to get 10 Naga Hides. The drop rate for Naga hides is about 1 in 1000, but they come quick if you drop a skill and trade up skinning!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
actually, we don't have to go back that far in history to discover people in our family tree who didn't get that.
Remember the examples from Greek mythology that involved inter-species breeding? There was a time when people thought the stories literal truth.
However, I was merely trying to make a crude joke about our ancestors and bestiality. Looks like the joke wasn't crude enough.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas."
Where does Paris Hilton get hers?
Based on some of her sex vids, I gotta say maybe from the same source, since many of her boyfriends appear to be gorillas - or at least dumber than gorillas.
Maybe even dumber than her, since they're screwing her.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
While the elements are naturally occuring, the order of the molecules isn't natural at all - polyester doesn't just "occur in nature" without human intervention (there are no polyester analogues to the silkworm, for example), whereas cotton, hemp, and wool all occur naturally. BTW, lame attempt at confabulation of atoms with molecular structure ...
In the context of archaeic anthropology, I think "artificial" pretty much would mean "artifact-y". I could probably look it up, and so could you. I think I'm making a pretty sound inference of the word in its context, however.
So. If you're making a joke about polyester shirts, that's cool with me. But if you were trying to call out lawpoop for saying something dumb, I just have to differ with you. Even though the word "artificial" was probably uneccessary.
On another point entirely... I had to look up "confabulate" to discover the second meaning I didn't know about. Thanks for prompting that! I could use that word all the time now... :-)
Take off every 'sig' !!
Hey, its all good :-) Its just that when I say you're confusing the substance (cotton or wool) with the things being made from it, its the same situation we run into all the time in programming, where people mistake the name of the thing (for example, the name of a variable) for the thing itself (or worse, a reference as being the thing).
People who confuse the two have a really hard time when you start assigning functions to variables.
Back on-topic - coding is like having lice - you really get an itch to scratch ...