I understand that you get lice from person to person contact.Eventually there was a beginning, a patient zero, a start. Not just generational growth
In: Biology
First off, lice are a huge and.varied family of their own. Lots of animals have lice. The ancestors of modern lice lived alongside, and on, the ancestors of modern mammals, way back when dinosaurs lived. And their ancestors before that.
So, there has probably never been a time when animals with fur didnt have some type of lice, or their ancestors. Thats just co-evolutuon. Some little blood-feediing insect finds mammal fur very suitable to live in, and the rest is history.
Meanwhile, when primates eventually showed up, some of these lice became specialized to live on primates. Different monkeys pass them around, both within and between species.
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/human-pubic-lice-acquired-from-gorillas-gives-evolutionary-clues/
This should blow your mind. Humans have two types of lice, because we don’t have full body fur. We have head lice and pubic lice, which are distinct. Human ancestors picked up our strain of pubic lice from gorillas’ regular lice, over 3 million years ago.
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