Scratching is one of the few endeavors where we inflict injury upon ourselves and
find the experience pleasurable. Even those of us without eczema scratch ourselves
hundreds of times a day in a way that is not at all productive. The compelling
evolutionary explanation for itch is that it persists for its protective rather than its
torturous potential. We itch so that we might identify insects clinging to our skin
and remove them before they can impale and inject us with the infectious agents
that manifest as malaria, yellow fever, river blindness, typhus, plague, or sleeping
sickness. The deadliest animal is still today, by no small margin, the mosquito, which
kills hundreds of thousands of people annually by spreading malaria
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