Someone call PETA! New research shows that the rise in bikini waxing means the pubic louse is coming close to extinction. Ayesha Muttucumaru reports
It’s a species that has graced the groins of many an unfortunate nether-region over the years, but new figures reveal that the pubic louse’s once dominant reign of terror could finally be drawing to a close.
With the growing trend for pubic hair removal (Brazilians, Hollywoods, and general down-below topiary) reaching an all-time high amongst its hosts, the louse (or the Phthirus pubis, if you please) has had no other option than to sit back and watch its natural habitat wiped out in all manner of traumatic and barbaric ways, with hot wax, razors, scissors and even chemical warfare cruelly used on their once safe, fruitful and fertile breeding grounds.
The Daily Mail and Bloomberg were the first to shed light on the frankly, shocking figures from Sydney’s main sexual health clinic who says that it hasn't treated a woman with pubic lice since 2008. If any lice were thinking of jumping ship to the rather more bumpy terrain of the male genitalia, I’m afraid that the future looks just as dismal. The once reliably hairier of the sexes has been increasingly participating in a phenomenon known as ‘manscaping’, thereby reducing the number of cases in this demographic by 80% in recent years too.
Depressing reading for lice everywhere, but it appears that the writing’s on the wall. The age old battle of human v crab may be finally reaching its rather brutal conclusion…