No Lice in Paradise

No headlice, sucking blood from their hosts, that is.

So, why lice? Why bloodsuckers?

St. Augustine posits, their embrya (or nits) were created in the one moment of creation, and they matured only after Adam sinned. If he hadn't, they would have been destroyed.

CMI posits, the human head louse descends from other lice that are beneficient. If Adam hadn't sinned, those mutations would not have happened.

Chewing lice live among the hairs or feathers of their host and feed on skin and debris, whereas sucking lice pierce the host's skin and feed on blood and other secretions. They usually spend their whole life on a single host, cementing their eggs, called nits, to hairs or feathers. The eggs hatch into nymphs, which moult three times before becoming fully grown, a process that takes about four weeks. Genetic evidence indicates that lice are a highly modified lineage of Psocoptera (now called Psocodea), commonly known as booklice, barklice or barkflies. The oldest known fossil lice are from the Cretaceous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louse

I think we can figure out which ones came after Adam sinned. The chewing lice might be doing their hosts a favour, under circumstances.

Sucking lice (Anoplura, formerly known as Siphunculata) have around 500 species and represent the smaller of the two traditional superfamilies of lice. As opposed to the paraphyletic chewing lice, which are now divided among three suborders, the sucking lice are monophyletic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucking_louse

Anoplura are monophyletic? Sounds like they went through a mutation in one ancestral population ... in other words, I think CMI would have a point here.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou of Paris
Octave of St. John the Baptist
1.VII.2024