Louse
Lice have been amongst our closest neighbours since our earliest evolution, and yet as Brett Westwood discovers, they both repel and fascinate us.
They infest our bodies and our clothes, are amongst our closet neighbours, have been made famous by Robert Burns and yet they are only a few millimetres in size. Brett Westwood explores our relationship with the louse; a creature that has lived alongside since our earliest evolution. Whether it's the head, clothes or crab lice these ancient creatures both repel and fascinate us.
Originally broadcast in a longer form on 29th August 2017
Original Producer Sarah Blunt.
Archive Producer : Andrew Dawes
Last on
Richard Jones
is an entomologist, a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and of the Linnean Society of London. He is the past president of the British Entomological and Natural History Society and co-author of βThe Little Book of Nits.β
Vincent Smith
is Research Leader at the Natural History Museum, London coordinating the Museum's digital science programmes. His taxonomic specialisation is on parasitic lice and he works on the Museum's 80-thousand louse specimensΒ collection, to understand the coevolution of these parasites on their bird and mammal hosts
Joanna Ibarra
Joanna founded the charity , which launched national Bug Busting Days. These promote community-wide, co-ordinated wet combing to detect head lice, a strategy warmly welcomed by Health and Education.Μύ
Bug Buster Help Line: 01908 561928.
David Reed
David Reed is the andΒ Associate Director of Research & Collections at the .
He is best known for research that explores human evolution through the lens of our speciesβ longtime traveling companion, the lowly louse.
His work focuses on host/parasite co-evolution. Lately, he has been driven by questions relating to the extent with which we can infer host evolutionary history simply by studying their host-specific parasites.Μύ
Anne Hardy
Anne Hardy is Honorary Professor of The History of Public Health at the .Μύ
Her interests lie chiefly in the history of infectious disease, both social and scientific, and she has also taught and written on medical history since 1800.
Doug Allan
In his day job, Doug is a but he is also a great raconteur and kindly agreed to read Robert Burns βTo a Louseβ for us.
Broadcasts
- Tue 29 Aug 2017 11:00ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 FM
- Mon 4 Sep 2017 21:00ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
- Sun 11 Jun 2023 06:35ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4