How does Head lice start?

Question

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

Answer 1

Lice, like all living beings, evolved from a prior species. That “proto-lice” to call it something simple, eventually had generations of baby bugs that had mutations. One mutated enough to be officially a new species, that we call a louse or lice for multiple. That mutation was advantageous so it procreated and boom, a successful species. Like all evolution basically. Most mutations do nothing or hinder the survival and dead-end the trail of evolution, but if a mutation works enough to allow for reproduction, then evolutionarily that is successful and will continue.