An Endangered Species you will be pleased to see the back of – Genital Crabs!
It can be quite fascinating what you’ll find; when you start looking for a story with a new twist to publish, .
Today I thought let’s have a look at the endangered species category, and I have to say pubic lice was the last thing I imagined would show up on the list; so for your amusement here’s an excerpt from the story: there’s a link to full story at the bottom.
Genital Crabs
Brazilian Bikini Waxes Make Genital Crabs an Endangered Species
By Jason Gale & Shannon Pettypiece
Pubic lice, the crab-shaped insects that have dwelled in human groins since the beginning of history, are disappearing.
Doctors say bikini waxing may be the reason.
Waning infestations of the bloodsuckers have been linked by doctors to pubic depilation, especially a technique popularized in the 1990s by a Manhattan salon run by seven Brazilian sisters.
More than 80 percent of college students in the U.S. remove all or some of their pubic hair — part of a trend that’s increasing in western countries.
In Australia, Sydney’s main sexual health clinic hasn’t seen a woman with pubic lice since 2008 and male cases have fallen 80 percent from about 100 a decade ago.
The trend suggests an alternative way of stemming one of the globe’s most contagious sexually transmitted infections.
Pubic lice are usually treated with topical insecticides, which once included toxic ones developed before and during World War 2.
While they aren’t known to spread disease, itchy skin reactions and subsequent infections make genital crabs a hazardous pest.
Clipping, waxing and shaving the groin destroy the optimal habitat of pubic lice.
A majority of college men and women in the U.S. and Australia remove all or part of their pubic hair, researchers at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, reported in a 2011 paper, citing surveys and research by other scholars.
Brazilian waxing took off internationally in the early 2000s, possibly spurred by the attention it was given on television shows such as Sex and the City, said Spring Cooper Robbins, a senior lecturer and sexual health researcher at the University of Sydney.
Environmental Disaster
“Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations,” said Ian F. Burgess, a medical entomologist with Insect Research & Development Ltd. in Cambridge, England. “Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species.”
Pubic lice, known scientifically as Phthirus pubis, infest about 2 percent to 10 percent of the human population, researchers at East Carolina University said in a 2009 study.
Incidence data aren’t kept by the World Health Organization in Geneva because the gray, six-legged, millimeter-long louse doesn’t transmit disease.
The ‘habitat destruction’ of the pubic lice is increasing and they are becoming an endangered species.
Ingrown Hairs
“No matter what type of hair removal is used, there is the risk of ingrown hairs,” Cooper Robbins said. “That also creates the opportunity for infection.”
The female louse needs to mate only once to remain fertile throughout her lifetime and can lay eggs every day. Once hatched, the young lice begin feeding straight away, gorging themselves with blood until discovered, according to Cambridge entomologist Burgess.Lice species that inhabit the human body generally stick to certain domains, with head lice staying near the scalp, body lice preferring to hide in clothing between blood-meals on the body, and pubic lice lingering predominantly in the coarse hair of the pubic and perianal areas, said Russell at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital.
Genital crabs are closely related to the gorilla- afflicting louse, Pthirus gorillae, from which it probably diverged 3.3 million years ago, researchers said.
The life cycle of the female pubic louse ends if it’s unable to find a suitable place to lay eggs, Russell said, making it plausible that pubic hair removal is reducing populations of the insect.
More at… Brazilian Bikini Waxes Make Crab Lice Endangered Species – Bloomberg
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