I'm Sick Of Shaving

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

1.If I were going to wager a guess, i would say hair on the head needs to be longer and thicker in order to keep our head warm. It might also be an attracting a mate thing.

2.Why do horse's have long tail hair and not long body hair?

3.Colobus monkeys have long hair on their backs, but not on their bellies?

4.Why are porcupine's bellies soft? (Quills, after all, are just stiff hair)

I think if it's not necessary, Nature will eventually not use it, since it takes resources to grow hair.

5. Which is why, in the future, I wonder if people will have no eyebrows.

1. Just puffy hair required to prevent the transfer of heat, hair that would hold air pockets when fluffed. Like most mammals in cold climate. Long hair might actually prevent this, especially straighter. The attracting the mate thing is usually done by one sex with one particular trait. Both sexes can grow long head hair.

2. From what I have observed, a long tail is quite handy in flicking unwanted insects away. I personally have been viciously swiped with horse hair. Probably because the horse knew I have flying insect tendencies... the pollen laden bumble bee dreams possibly.

3. Another profound question that you need to look into with your friend who works with them at the zoo. I think you said that before? the friend at the zoo.

4. They walk close to the ground. That would be very hard dragging those quills along the ground. And many species roll up into balls, protecting the soft underbelly becoming a terra firma sea urchin as it were. If they rolled into a ball with quills extended they might impale their own soft underbelly.

5. Eyebrows come in very handy as an extra shield from the sun. I think they are also useful in reading and giving facial expressions that are important for us social types of animals. And resource wise I dont think this costs a lot. And of course the gene or genes that might control this trait, might also control other useful traits, so it might not go away at all.

The probe continues GR. I thank you for your contributions so far (especially the article as I had not researched this and had never seen an attempt at an answer). I would hope other board members would join in this most noble quest for the truth about hair; transfer their energies from the sexual, to the curious. GR you have some training in the biological sciences, in populations anyhow?

[GenuineRisk]

I don't have a background in biology, Pgardn (though I did well in it at school), but from working at the zoo, one picks up an awful lot.

Right, my examples were that humans aren't alone in having differing lengths of hair on their bodies- I agree about the function of the horse's tail, etc.

I still think there may be something to hair as a sexual attractor- women's hair is thickest around age 15 or 16- it's all downhill from there.

Here's more on body hair vs. head hair, from Wikipedia:

Body hair

Historically, several ideas have been advanced to describe the reduction of human body hair. All were faced with the same problem that there is no fossil record of human hair to back up the conjectures nor to determine exactly when the feature evolved. Savanna theory suggests that nature selected humans for shorter and thinner body hair as part of a set of adaptations to the warm plains of the savanna, including bipedal locomotion and an upright posture. There are several problems with this theory, not least of which is that cursorial hunting is used by other animals that do not show any thinning of hair. Another theory for the thin body hair on humans proposes that Fisherian runaway sexual selection played a role here (as well as in the selection of long head hair). Possibly this occurred in conjunction with neoteny, with the more juvenile appearing females being selected by males as more desirable; see types of hair and vellus hair. The aquatic ape hypothesis posits that sparsity of hair is an adaptation to an aquatic environment, but it has little support amongst scientists and very few aquatic mammals are, in fact, hairless.

In reality, there may be little to explain. Humans, like all primates, are part of a trend toward sparser hair in larger animals; the density of human hair follicles on the skin is actually about what one would expect for an animal of our size[1]. The outstanding question is why so much of human hair is short, underpigmented vellus hair rather than terminal hair.

And the whole entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair#Growth

Thank you for the article. But the quest for answers concerning long head hair in both sexes must continue.


Attachment 315

I find this humbling. I am a naked ape compared to Pillow.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by pgardn

Thank you for the article. But the quest for answers concerning long head hair in both sexes must continue.


Attachment 315

I find this humbling. I am a naked ape compared to Pillow.

Eh, I've seen hairier. Didn't date it for long, mind you...

Originally Posted by Bababooyee

Popcorn + wine + that pic and you still didn't get sick!??!

I'm impressed!

(just kidding, pgardn...think of it this way, you prolly have high testosterone levels)

Its actually not a picture of me. I have very sparse body and head hair. It was intended be a description of Pillow's body hair. I am reminded of his first avatar that involved some sort of humping display, so give him the testosterone. I dont have the time or hormones to turn my head when naked women walk by.