Talk:Louse

The first sentence needs the semicolon replaced with a comma. (Why is this article locked?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.214.238 (talk) 09:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Untitled

According to Wikipedia policy, shouldn't this be at Louse? RickK 01:58 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved it, seeing as how the page for mice is "Mouse" instead of "Mice". --ɛvɪs 21:49, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Someone want to consider putting the information for the life cycle of the louse on here? Here's a good link for information on the subject: http://ohioline.osu.edu/b893/b893_3.html

--BleachInjected 01:34, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Isn't there another kind of louse that commonly resides on bed mattresses and pillows, or on a wooden table inside small crevices...etc. It is quite common in the region where I live - Kerala, India. Someday I'd like to see how to get rid of such kinds of louse.User:Deostroll--Arun T 18:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, those are the same as body lice. --Mr. Jenkins 00:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Jenkins, I believe you are painting with a very broad brush. Deosteroll gives us limited information to identify the organisism found in furniture crevices in India. Everywhere I have spent in North America, Ontario, Michigan and California, I have seen black beetles of 4-5cm length which appear to have a proboscis, but I have never observed them sucking anything. I frequently encounter the book louse, (which curiously has no Wiki page, YET). They are pin-head sized and completely colorless so one would question the belief that they ever sucked blood from a higher order. I have seen the bedbug, (Cimex lectularius), head louse, (Pediculus capitus), body louse, (Pediculus corpora), and pubic louse, (Phtyrus pubis. You are correct in the belief that the body louse and book louse is found on furniture, but I believe that Deosteroll is describing some other species.--W8IMP 13:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey I noticed this sentence: "] Ischnoceran lice may reduce the thermoregulation effect of the plumage, thus heavily infected birds loss more heat than other ones." can someone with permisson to edit, clean up the awkward wording there? thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.120.47.243 (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Plagiarism

I removed the following section for plagiarism. It was cut and pasted from a newspaper article:

David Reed, of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, said it was unlikely that the louse spread from gorillas to human ancestors through cross-species sexual transmission.

He and his colleagues, reporting their findings in the journal BMC Biology, said: “Evidence suggests that the Phirus pubis has been associated with humans for several million years and likely arrived on humans via a host switch from gorillas.

“Despite the fact that human pubic lice are primarily transmitted via sexual contact, such contact is not required to explain the host switch.

“Parasites often switch from a given species to a predator of that species, and are sometimes found to switch to unrelated hosts in communally used areas, such as roosting or nesting sites.”

Dr Reed added: “It certainly wouldn’t have to be what many people are going to immediately assume it might have been, and that is sexual intercourse occurring between humans and gorillas."

You can't copy things word for word without permission, and even if you could newspaper article style is not encyclopedic, you'd have to change it to an encyclopedic style anyway. Brentt 18:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Bible Reference

in the description there is the phrase "They were also the third Biblical plague out of ten." that seems out of place, shouldn't it be something like they were common / reported for thousands of year/ considered so bad they were part of a bad series of events called "plagues" in the bible , my wording is no good but hopefully you get my drift —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.0.210.200 (talk) 00:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

See also

Is the mother-in-law crack really necessary? Monkey Bounce (talk) 22:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC) they mite piss you off but they can be removed some things you can use to get ride of them it nix its the best stuf out there

well i use mayonaise and tea tree oil to name a few and lice were one plague that god sent they mate and reproduce quickly from what ive saw and they go for clean untreated

hair but if you use alot of products that make you hair greasy and dirty your not likely to get lice but sometimes you still do so be aware take notes of whos scratching you would probably want to keep a distance take notice and youll life wount be so hard because lic are hard to get rid of —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.177.105.119 (talk) 15:25, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Corrections: Lice infect some of the species which article explicitly denies

Pzoot (talk) 16:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC) I think the claim that bats do not have lice is likely to be incorrect, and would need a citation anyway. For example [[1]] from the Illinois department of public health says lice can infest bats.

Also, Wikipedia itself seems to suggest that lice infest whales, despite this article explicitly excluding them. Shanoman (talk) 00:15, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I've heard that chinchilla are the only mammal that doesn't have ectoparasites, because their fur is so thick. Don't have any reliable sources though. It would be interesting to know how true this is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mushmushmushmush (talk • contribs) 20:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

1. No chewing lice are known to infect bats. 2. No chewing lice are known to infect wales. 3. Chinchillas are infected by two species of chewing lice: Philandesia chincillae (Werneck, 1935) and Philandesia mazzai (Werneck, 1933). Source: Price, Hellenthal, palma, Johnson, Clayton (2003): The Chewing lice - World checklist and biological overview. Illinois Natural History Survey Special Publication 24. This book does not contain sucking lice, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grijndvar (talk • contribs) 15:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Chats

At Chat you can read

Chat may refer to:

• Chats, the way British soldiers referred to delousing in WW1

Is that true? --Abe Lincoln (talk) 18:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

what does "sexual rivalry" mean in this article?

what do you guys mean by the statement: Lice infestation is a disadvantage in the context of sexual rivalry? just doesnt sound right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thebestofall007 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Msmusiclaw, 22 September 2011

There are several typos, not major but should be corrected.Msmusiclaw (talk) 19:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Msmusiclaw (talk) 19:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Done — Bility (talk) 20:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC) Lice is actually very, very small, and some times,you can not see it, but if you put a comb through your hair, it will pop up. I think the best brand to get rid of lice is the brand called Nix. By Musiclover

The first sentence uses a semicolon when a comma should be used instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.214.238 (talk) 09:34, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Divergence date for pubic lice from gorillas to humans

I don't understand why the divergence date in the article says 2,000,000 years ago when the Reed et al. paper [2] clearly estimates 3-4 million years ago:

The two species of Pthirus (Pthirus gorillae and Pthirus pubis) last shared a common ancestor ca. 3–4 million years ago, which is considerably younger than the divergence between their hosts (gorillas and humans, respectively), of approximately 7 million years ago.

[...]

The divergence date estimates for the gorilla and human pubic lice (Pthirus gorillae and Pthirus pubis, respectively) averaged 3.32 MYA and are noticeably more recent than the split between the two Pediculus species.

[...]

It is important to note that this happened after the divergence of chimpanzees and humans and that these data suggest humans acquired their pubic louse from gorillas not recently, but rather 3–4 million years ago.

I'll change the article to say 3-4 MYA. --Saforrest (talk) 17:44, 25 September 2012 (UTC) I will change humans to human ancestors or hominids. Humans exist since only 300.000 years. Older species are not humans (homo sapiens), but hominids. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.32.89 (talk) 18:29, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Cooties

Shouldn't there be something in the Body Louse section explaining how the mythical phantom childhood disease of "cooties" gets its name from a name used for the body louse? four tildes