Generally when an animal is losing its habitat because of human activity, it’s a shame and an ecological tragedy. But not when said animal is Pthirus pubis, better known to doctors as pubic lice and to everybody else as crabs. Thanks to the fad for hardwood instead of carpet, the disgusting little monsters are facing severe loss of habitat. Hooray!
Yes, everybody shaving, trimming, and getting Brazilian waxes has made it hard out there for a disgusting parasitic sexually transmitted infection:
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. 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.
Basically, their ideal habitat is your groin, and when you trim back, or completely remove, your southern beard, they’ve got nothing to latch onto.
Realistically, it’s not likely they’re going to be wiped out completely: All we have to work with is reported data, which is thin on the ground. On the other hand, with supposedly 80% of college students, male and female, yanking up the carpet, and the trend generally being here to stay for some odd reason, it seems that in the First World, at least, pubic lice are in trouble.
Normally, this would be a cause for concern, but in this case we’re talking about a creature that, if you tell it to bite your ass, it’s all, “Don’t mind if I do!” If there were any animal that deserves to die, it’s this one. So keep on rockin’ the Brazilians, sexually active ladies. You’re doing the world a favor.