[Graeme]

Why humans have no fur — explained

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')eat might explain why we lost our fur and now strike an upright and slim (in theory, anyway) pose.
If our ancestors lived somewhere really hot, the theory goes, it would have made sense for us to lose body hair, start sweating more, become slender and even walk upright — to create distance between our bodies and the hot ground.

A new study supports the theory that heat helped drive human evolution, by showing that a key cradle of human evolution in East Africa has indeed been really hot for at least 4 million years.

Their results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that dirt in the Turkana Basin has remained above about 85 degrees Fahrenheit with spikes above 95 degrees F over the past 4 million years. Since soil absorbs heat from the air, that means that the region has been really hot for a really long time.

[timmac]

Yea that makes a lot of sense , Than why do monkeys and apes still have fur and still walk close to the ground, why have they not evolved..

[efarmer]

And I guess we didn't evolve hooves because we learned how to dance on hot dirt, formed a rhumba line, and headed for someplace to make our feets happier. Hot feets taught us to dance, and probably sing too, must have been strange to hear them sing the hot feets blues real mean and low while their feets was doing the fast jitterbug and tap dance stuff. Once they migrated away, they probably passed the hot feets dance down through the generations, but without the real hot feets, it was probably just another empty ritual the kids had to learn so they could dance with the old people at weddings and feasts. "Hey Og, come on boy, walk out on the fire coals and just let it come to you, that's it, you're doin' it now boy, now just hot feets jitterbug back on out here and dance with Grandma."

[Narz]

Good to know we're cut out to survive in very hot temperatures!

[Tanada]

If we are going to play evolution science then the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis makes a lot more sense too me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_Ape_Theory

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hile it is uncontroversial that both H. neanderthalensis and early H. sapiens were better suited to aquatic environments than other great apes,[1][2] and there have been theories suggesting protohumans underwent some adaptations due to interaction with water[3] the sort of radical specialization posited by the AAH has not been accepted within the scientific community as a valid explanation for human divergence from related primates. It has been criticized for possessing a variety of theoretical problems, for lacking evidentiary support, and due to alternative explanations for many of the observations suggested to support the theory. Morgan and others have also suggested that her status as an academic outsider has hindered acceptance of the theory.

[PrestonSturges]

I believe it was anthropologist Richard Leakey that lost both feet as a result of a plane crash. A couple years later he was asked that effected his Africa work, and he said that it was very difficult to control his body temperature without feet. Our head and feet are designed to blow off heat, from the hot ground and from our big brains.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', 'Y')ea that makes a lot of sense , Than why do monkeys and apes still have fur and still walk close to the ground, why have they not evolved..

[SoothSayer]

Humans have evolved into being very social creatures.

I suspect that we have lost facial fur so that we can read each others expressions very clearly.

Dunno about losing fur from the rest of the body 'tho.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', 'Y')ea that makes a lot of sense , Than why do monkeys and apes still have fur and still walk close to the ground, why have they not evolved..

[Oakley]

Yet another explanation. Who knows!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r. Mark Pagel of the University of Reading in England and Dr. Walter Bodmer of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have proposed a different solution to the mystery and their idea, if true, goes far toward explaining contemporary attitudes about hirsuteness. Humans lost their body hair, they say, to free themselves of external parasites that infest fur -- blood-sucking lice, fleas and ticks and the diseases they spread.

Once hairlessness had evolved through natural selection, Dr. Pagel and Dr. Bodmer suggest, it then became subject to sexual selection, the development of features in one sex that appeal to the other. Among the newly furless humans, bare skin would have served, like the peacock's tail, as a signal of fitness.

[lper100km]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', 'Y')et another explanation. Who knows!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r. Mark Pagel of the University of Reading in England and Dr. Walter Bodmer of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have proposed a different solution to the mystery and their idea, if true, goes far toward explaining contemporary attitudes about hirsuteness. Humans lost their body hair, they say, to free themselves of external parasites that infest fur -- blood-sucking lice, fleas and ticks and the diseases they spread.

Once hairlessness had evolved through natural selection, Dr. Pagel and Dr. Bodmer suggest, it then became subject to sexual selection, the development of features in one sex that appeal to the other. Among the newly furless humans, bare skin would have served, like the peacock's tail, as a signal of fitness.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', 'Y')ea that makes a lot of sense , Than why do monkeys and apes still have fur and still walk close to the ground, why have they not evolved..

[timmac]

This makes about as much sense as if the Eskimos are now growing fur because they have lived in cold climates for thousands of years.


Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools - Romans 1:22

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', 'T')his makes about as much sense as if the Eskimos are now growing fur because they have lived in cold climates for thousands of years.


Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools - Romans 1:22

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', ' ')
Incidentally, we're in the process right now of evolving away our little toes (pinky toe). They're already pretty much vestigial and not much use. Another example of ongoing human evolution are wisdom teeth -- they're about halfway evolved out of the species. Some of us get them, some of us don't, and a lot of us have to have them removed because they grow in all screwy and impacted.

[efarmer]

Quote:

"The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist. 100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.
The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics"

"underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures..."

I knew, I knew it, I knew it.
I am a man of the future, probably not the homo Gucci erectus elitus, but it sure as hell feels good to know I am in there with the two finalist teams. Not sure about the sexual selection part, do some folks select mates and not have to depend on liquor and sympathy?

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Incidentally, we're in the process right now of evolving away our little toes (pinky toe). They're already pretty much vestigial and not much use. Another example of ongoing human evolution are wisdom teeth -- they're about halfway evolved out of the species. Some of us get them, some of us don't, and a lot of us have to have them removed because they grow in all screwy and impacted.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'A')ctually that turns out not to be the case, it is only in countries that spoil themselves with massively pre-processed food that Wisdom teeth sometimes become impacted. It turns out that if you eat a lot of raw vegetable matter your wisdom teeth almost always come in straight and healthy.

[vtsnowedin]

There is also this. Wisdom teeth tend to come in at about age eighteen which is end of childhood for most of us today (grad students excepted) but would have been middle aged for our ancestors walking the savannas of Africa. As late as Roman times thirty five was considered old age. A eighteen year old hunter gatherer would have been mated with half grown children and have a lot of wear on his or her teeth and probably have lost a few leaving plenty of space for the wisdom teeth to come in and act as replacements .
Back to the original question it makes sense that as soon as people moved far enough north to encounter winter and sub freezing temperatures they would have invented clothes as those that went further north without them would not survive. Once your clad in fur body hair is of little or no use and those with less would naturally become the best makers of fur clothes hence the fittest.
That does not explain however how those that never left tropical Africa lost their body hair. Did the newly naked reverse migrate and breed out or eat the hairy cousins that stayed behind.
I don't buy the vermin reduction theory. The settlers at Plymouth rock were infested with lice amoung other things as were the soldiers of WWI .Clearly as long as you have any body hair or hair on your head you can get infested.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', 'I') suspect that we have lost facial fur so that ...