It`s probably fair to say that most people do not care for flies, fleas, lice, mites, mosquitoes, bedbugs, chiggers and ticks, individually or as a group.
When we`re aware of their presence, we tend to curse them, pick at them, swat them, spray them, stomp them and generally do everything we can to annihilate them.
Yet Roger M. Knutson, a professor of biology at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, asks us to appreciate these annoying little devils, even if we don`t want to associate with them. He even calls them ”our friends.”
At first glance, this attitude will be difficult for many to accept. It`s not going to be much easier at second glance, either.
After all, friends do not attach themselves to your hair follicles, reproduce on your forehead or lay eggs in your underwear, and friends do not suck your blood. At least they don`t literally suck your blood. Not usually, anyway.
Still, if anyone is capable of getting us to open our minds and consider anything even remotely redeeming about flies, fleas, lice, mites, etc., it`s Knutson (pronounced kuh-NOOT-sun), who has a knack (not pronounced kuh-NAK)
for writing about wildlife in a wonderfully strange, witty and informative way.
His first quirky manual, published in 1987, was ”Flattened Fauna,”
which acquainted readers with America`s rich diversity of mammals, reptiles and birds by focusing on carcasses squashed by highway traffic.
Knutson made roadkill funny and fascinating, and with another deft blend of fact and irony, he does the same for parasitic pests in ”Furtive Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures Who Live on You,” issued this month by Penguin Books.
Stating his case for a tolerant inquiry, he writes: ”To know people well-yourself well-you should know your closest and most enduring, if not endearing, companions: your parasites.”
The creatures in question, he emphasizes, are those that live on or visit our exteriors and think of us as food and shelter. If they could think.
”Most are just about too small to see, or, if they are visible, they move quickly,” Knutson writes.
Maybe it would help to visualize them as extremely tiny pets.
Like the most loyal dog or imperious cat, they don`t care if you watch too much TV or fail to exercise regularly.
To them, every person is beautiful, regardless of age, gender, birth sign or cholesterol level.
But it`s more than that. To them, people are absolutely essential.
Without human beings, they`re history, toast, goners.
Sure, Knutson concedes, you could describe the entire bunch as freeloaders, but because ”they are smaller and easier to maintain,” they`re far superior to their human counterparts, such as in-laws.
His entertaining approach has been honed in the classroom. ”What comes from 40 years of teaching is the realization that humor works,” he said in an interview. ”It gets people to pay attention, and if people aren`t paying attention, not much happens.”
But a lot is happening on your body.
Knutson notes that your face alone is home sweet home for thousands of teeny eight-legged critters, which, at any given moment, may be
. . . breeding. In plain sight. Perhaps right under your nose.
It`s hard to know whether to be disgusted, embarrassed or intrigued.
And you can forget looking in a mirror to watch. The intrepid exhibitionists, known as face mites, are among those that can`t be seen by the-pardon the expression-naked eye.
Fortunately, science has found that these fellows never defecate, presumably dying, Knutson writes, ”of terminal constipation.”
While the author`s tone is light-hearted, his purpose is serious. ”This is a book about ecology,” Knutson said in the interview. ”Its central message is about the relationship of environment and organisms.”
His hope is that it will enable us to see ourselves as a habitat, the formal name for the place an animal lives.
”We should not divide the world into organisms that are `for us` or
`against us,` nor should we call some `parasites,` ” he said. ”In a sense, we`re all parasites in that all of us depend on other creatures. These organisms in the book are dependent on us the same way we`re dependent on cows or pigs or chickens.”
Benign fellow creatures
He also wants to alleviate anxiety. ”Very few of the organisms (in the book) carry disease, and we know how to protect ourselves,” Knutson said.
”An overwhelming majority are benign, and we should look at them as fellow creatures that have to find a place to live, gather food, raise children and get along in the world.”
Some exceptions are (1) mosquitoes, which can transmit ”malaria, yellow fever and a host of other well-known diseases” although the menace comes only from those ”that have already had a meal (of blood) from a sick person”
infected with said diseases; and (2) ticks, which do not have ”especially close or dependent relationships with people” but when feasting on human blood can pass on a bewildering number of illnesses that range from ”not too serious to invariably fatal.” (Among the more serious are Lyme disease and Russian spring encephalitis.)
Not that ticks don`t have their admirable qualities. ”They have a remarkable capacity for patience,” Knutson said. ”They`ll climb on a leaf and stay there for years and years with absolute confidence that a warm-blooded animal will go by at some point.”
A tick can sense when something or someone suitable for their nutritional needs is approaching and then hop aboard to eat.
As far as flies are concerned, he said: ”The vast majority aren`t carrying diseases. They are only a minor inconvenience.”
For organisms that are partial to human beings, we can be a terrific spot to put down roots, ”a genuine land of milk and honey for the home-seeking louse, flea or mite.”
Food is abundant, the climate warm. The landscape offers a multiplicity of inviting residential sites and superb tourist attractions. There`s no crime, and for a long period each day, the atmosphere is perfectly tranquil.
The downside, Knutson said, is that we move and bathe often and are always checking ourselves for uninvited foreign bodies. And, of course, when we discover them, we kill them.
This translates into a hazardous existence for those that loiter or settle in certain regions.
The previously mentioned face mites, for example, have to be exceedingly hardy to survive.
Knutson writes: ”The human face is one of the least hospitable environments on the human landscape. It is mostly exposed to the elements, it usually bears little or no covering, much of it is maintained almost hairless and is washed frequently . . . it must be like living on a series of continually active geological faults with floods and earthquakes an every-minute occurrence.”
This could explain why face mites don`t go to the bathroom: They`re too busy hanging on or too terrified.
These minuscule adventurers, along with head and pubic lice, itch mites and tropical jiggoes (”a reason for staying in the temperate zone,” Knutson writes) are among the population that uses our bodies as a permanent domicile. Other categories are:
– Visitors. Ticks, flies, mosquitoes and chiggers are like vacationers who drop by for a quick meal, as if we were a fast-food franchise, or sometimes settle in for longer stays, treating us as if we were a Club Med, a luxury hotel or a four-star restaurant.
– Neighbors. Bedbugs, fleas and body lice set up housekeeping in our vicinity; dust mites, barely visible varmints with a taste for following in our footsteps, one might say, graze on the nutritious flakes of dead cells your body wears and constantly sheds. Don`t panic, but at this very moment millions and millions of dust mites may be chomping away on human leavings in your carpet. Vacuum all you want. They`ll still be there.
– Way too small to see. Here you have the tooth amoeba; the fungi that lock onto hair or nestle between toes and cause athlete`s foot; and billions and billions of bacteria (as many as all the people who have ever lived, scientists estimate) that cover you-ugh-from head to foot.
Many of these fellow travelers have been observers and participants of human evolution for millions of years, and, over the centuries, some have fared better than others.
Our debt to the fleas
For instance, Knutson said, ”We`ve gone from a time when everyone had fleas to their being an endangered species, thanks to our efforts to get rid of them.”
We can be happy they`re gone, but we should also recognize their contribution to the human race.
Fleas, Knutson says, are among the wee members of the animal kngdom that prepared us for reading.
Say what?
”We`ve spent hundreds of thousands of years grooming ourselves, searching for these little creatures and removing them,” Knutson explained.
”This means looking for little black things against a lighter surface.”
Aha.
”So when alphabets and then the printed word came along,” he suggested, ”we were ready.”
Count your blessings. If it hadn`t been for fleas, perhaps we wouldn`t be able to read about them.
