Stone louse
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
humorist Loriot
Vicco von Bülow
Bernhard Victor Christoph Carl von Bülow , more commonly known under the pseudonym Loriot, was a German comedian, humorist, cartoonist, film director, actor and writer.He is most well known for his cartoons, the sketches from his 1976 television series...
to parody nature documentaries
Nature documentary
A natural history film or wildlife film is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat...
. It was primarily featured in a video sketch, as well as being a fictitious entry
Fictitious entry
Fictitious entries, also known as fake entries, Mountweazels, ghost word and nihil articles, are deliberately incorrect entries or articles in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories. Entries in reference works normally originate from a reliable external source,...
in the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
medical encyclopedic dictionary Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch
Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch
Pschyrembel most commonly refers to a popular medical dictionary in German language, the Pschyrembel Clinical Dictionary .-Pschyrembel Clinical Dictionary:...
.
Characteristics
Its 1976 "discovery" by LoriotVicco von Bülow
Bernhard Victor Christoph Carl von Bülow , more commonly known under the pseudonym Loriot, was a German comedian, humorist, cartoonist, film director, actor and writer.He is most well known for his cartoons, the sketches from his 1976 television series...
parodied the presentation style of "Ein Platz für Tiere" (A Place for Animals, longstanding TV Series about endangered wildlife) by the famous German zoologist and documentary filmmaker Dr. Bernhard Grzimek
Bernhard Grzimek
Bernhard Klemens Maria Grzimek was a renowned Silesian-German zoo director, zoologist, book author, editor, and animal conservationist in postwar West-Germany.-Early years:Grzimek was born in Neisse , Upper Silesia...
(ARD
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
, 20.47-51).
In a factual style, the stone louse was described as a rodent-like mite
Mite
Mites, along with ticks, are small arthropods belonging to the subclass Acari and the class Arachnida. The scientific discipline devoted to the study of ticks and mites is called acarology.-Diversity and systematics:...
in the order "Fictional Rodents", between 20 and 24 mm in length which consumes about 28 kilograms of stone per day, depending on the density and tastiness of said stone. Loriot gave some deadpan
Deadpan
Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone, solemn, blunt, disgusted or matter-of-fact voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor...
comments on a filmed Building implosion
Building implosion
In the controlled demolition industry, building implosion is the strategic placing of explosive material and timing of its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds, minimizing the physical damage to its immediate surroundings...
, he mentioned the "shy rodent" to be at lunch in its natural habitat (before the explosion). While the building vanished into dust and rubble he caringly spoke about the "possierliche kleine Nager" (endearing little rodents) and finalized with some points about their endangered status.
Publication in Pschyrembel
In 1983 the clinical dictionary PschyrembelPschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch
Pschyrembel most commonly refers to a popular medical dictionary in German language, the Pschyrembel Clinical Dictionary .-Pschyrembel Clinical Dictionary:...
, from German scientific publisher Walter de Gruyter
Walter de Gruyter
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG is a scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. Its origins date back to 1749 when it was given the right to print books by King Frederick II of Prussia. -De Gruyter Mouton:...
, contained information about the stone louse for the first time in printed form. The short article is thought to be based mainly on Loriot's TV documentary.
Extending Loriot's parody, the Pschyrembel informs about the louse's value in fighting bladder, gall and kidney stones. The subspecies gallstone
Gallstone
A gallstone is a crystalline concretion formed within the gallbladder by accretion of bile components. These calculi are formed in the gallbladder, but may pass distally into other parts of the biliary tract such as the cystic duct, common bile duct, pancreatic duct, or the ampulla of...
louse and kidney stone
Kidney stone
A kidney stone, also known as a renal calculus is a solid concretion or crystal aggregation formed in the kidneys from dietary minerals in the urine...
louse are mentioned only briefly due to "lack of further scientific data".
In the 257th edition of the Pschyrembel, the authors omitted the fictitious entry
Fictitious entry
Fictitious entries, also known as fake entries, Mountweazels, ghost word and nihil articles, are deliberately incorrect entries or articles in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories. Entries in reference works normally originate from a reliable external source,...
. The following edition, in 1997, featured it again due to protests from readers and was presented on Frankfurt Book Fair
Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books, based on the number of publishing companies represented. As to the number of visitors, the Turin Book Fair attracts about as many visitors, viz. some 300,000....
as the correct "Steinlaus inside" version.
Recently-found insights found their way into this new version, which even speculated about the stone louse's participation in the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
, since the wall was mainly placed in areas "commonly inhabited by the stone louse". That theory was reinforced by discoveries that the stone louse might have been used by the Spartans to bring down the ancient Athenians' Long Walls
Long Walls
The Long Walls , in Ancient Greece, were walls built from a city to its port, providing a secure connection to the sea even during times of siege. Although long walls were built at several locations in Greece—Corinth and Megara being two of the best known examples—the phrase "long...
. Other hypotheses connect the stone louse with the end of the Stone Age
Stone Age
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...
.
The Pschyrembel denies that the stone louse has become extinct, and refers to recent "sightings" by a local expert on stone lice, "Dr. Schlereth", at construction sites in Kronach, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. The 260th and most recent edition extends the article even further, referring to results in homeopathy
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient...
.
Further publications and sightings
The fictional Member of Parliament Jakob Maria MierscheidJakob Maria Mierscheid
Jakob Maria Mierscheid MdB has been a fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 11 December 1979. He was then the alleged deputy chairman of the Mittelstandsausschuss of the Bundestag in 1981 and 1982...
has contributed to the (fictional) 3. Hoechster Steinlaus-Symposium, XII (3) in Frankfurt.
A contribution to a Senckenberg Museum
Senckenberg Museum
The Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt is the second largest museum of natural history in Germany. It is particularly popular with children, who enjoy the extensive collection of dinosaur skeletons: Senckenberg boasts the largest exhibition of large dinosaurs in Europe. One particular treasure is...
Symposium in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
1999 mentioned dangers posed by stone lice to the protection of architectural heritage and monuments.
Within Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
Zoo some stone lice are tended and on display.
According a scientific paper of Deutsche Bibliothek a ballpark guess of the amount of stone lice in the neighborhood of German libraries amounted to 113.3 billion. The author, Dr. Florian Seiffert, assumes that after the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
, stone lice went for another ecological niche and found it in libraries.
The German Insurance Catalogue for the German Public Health Service (only the G-DRG Version 2003/2004) temporarily mentioned Stonelouse Parasitism on men as a possible illness and gave some indications about average treatment, cost tags and remedies. The Color Atlas of Pathology by Thieme Medical Publishers
Thieme Medical Publishers
Thieme Medical Publishers is a German medical and science publisher in the Thieme Publishing Group. It produces professional journals, textbooks, atlases, monographs and reference books in both German and English covering a variety of medical specialties, including neurosurgery, orthopaedics,...
refers to Petrophaga lorioti as a therapeutic infestation that could be used in the management of stone disorders
Calculus (medicine)
A calculus is a stone that forms in an organ or duct of the body. Formation of calculi is known as lithiasis...
.
The municipality of Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
has issued an official guidance for citizens having trouble with stone lice.