Stone louse

Loriot created a popular mockumentary titled The Stone-Louse, a parody of Ein Platz für Tiere ("A Place for Animals"), a longstanding TV series about endangered wildlife by the famous German zoologist and documentary filmmaker Dr. Bernhard Grzimek (ARD, 20.47-51).

As the building vanishes into dust and rubble in the background, Loriot caringly speaks about the "possierliche kleine Nager" ("endearing little rodents") and concludes with some "alarming" points about the endangered status of the entire species.

In 1983, the clinical dictionary Pschyrembel, from German scientific publisher Walter de Gruyter, contained information about the stone louse for the first time in printed form.

[1] A contribution to a Senckenberg Museum Symposium in Frankfurt in 1999 mentioned "dangers" posed by stone lice to the protection of architectural heritage and monuments.

The author, Dr. Florian Seiffert, assumes that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, stone lice sought another ecological niche and found it in libraries.

The Color Atlas of Pathology by Thieme Medical Publishers refers to Petrophaga lorioti as a therapeutic infestation that could be used in the management of stone disorders.