Why are humans one of the only mammals that don’t have fur all over their skin. What’s the advantage?
In: 125
Sweating. We evolved in a hot climate, and we, unlike many animals, can cool off from all over the body sweating. It allows us to run longer than other animals can before we over-heat. Some hunter-gatherer groups in Africa still take advantage of it by hunting prey by chasing them until the prey literally can’t run any more.
Originally, we are persistance hunters from the African savannah. Our method to get proteins is to run after an animal and track it until it falls from exhaustion. Now, if you have thick fur and you try to exercise for long periods of time in the middle of the savannah, you’ll likely overheat and die or pass out yourself: most other furry predators are either ambush or speed hunters.
We then lost most of our fur and developed a new way for temperature regulation: sweating. Then, since we have handled fire for around 1 million years, there was also little need for fur to keep warm. We then just kept a patch of fur on our head to prevent insolation and try to keep our brains away from direct sunlight.
So you’ve never had to pick fleas off a dog? It’s obvious that fur is a huge disadvantage when it comes to fleas and lice. It’s almost impossible to remove lice from a furry body.
It is very easy to do parasite maintenance on our skin with less hair. Parasites are a bigger problem than what we usually hear about. Ive seen animals with hundreds of ticks, with many being the size of grapes. Parasites are even more dangerous to social animal cultures, because they congregate in dense population which allows the parasites to spread more easily.
Being able to to clean our skin easily is somewhat of a super power.
Also, everything the others said about sweat.
There are literally dozens of mammals that don’t have fur or hair. Pigs, naked mole rats, hairless cats, elephants, and hippopotamuses, just to name a few.
Yeah? And why don’t we get tails?!
Do other animals besides us have pets?
Walrus, seal, whale, mole or hairless egytian cat and a lot more other mammal don’t have fur
In the simple terms, humans can remove layers when it starts to get hot (cue Nelly), therefore allowing the evaporation of sweat to cool us down. When it gets cold, we can add layers to keep us warm.
The versatility of this allows humans to live in almost any type of extreme environmental condition, such as the tropics, the (ant)arctic, mountainous, or deserts. Having fur or thick hair would both be a hindrance in producing and subsequently shedding (requires resources that would otherwise be utilized elsewhere), maintaining (can harbour pests, smells, and dirt), and travelling (extra weight especially when wet). Although it could be used for protection, humans rose to become apex predators, by using tools, teams, and tact.
In simple gaming terms, humans have high INT stats that ultimately can buff any other stat the human wants, therefore defensive perks and abilities can be replaced with something else.
Have you seen our women?
Techically, we do. Take a close look at your arm or leg some time. We actually have a very similar amount of hair to a chimpanzee. It’s just much, much finer and (mostly) shorter.
Latest Answers