I suppose crustaceans are another such animal that relies on the body of another living species to survive as hermit crab. But humans are the only mammal that needs to weave the vine; shear the fur; or scalp the leather from another living thing in order to survive in the wilderness.
Why is that? How did humans manage to be the only species that requires clothing to survive and needs to rely on other animals to provide material to produce clothing.
Obviously I know that synthetic fibers exist *now,* but for most of human history, we relied on animal products to clothe ourselves for as long as humans existed.
Why do hominids need clothes to live? Where is our fur? Alternatively, where are all the other animals that need to rely on clothing to supplement a protective outer layer?
In: Biology
You got it backwards. We don’t need clothes to live. Our ability to make clothes allowed us to expand to additional climates where we would have struggled without clothes. Other animals stay in a range where the climate allows them to live comfortably. Its why you don’t see many giraffes roaming Siberia
They required them to move away from locations that didn’t require them. If we stayed near the equator, we wouldn’t need clothing.
In equatorial areas where we started, humans *don’t* need clothes. We were smart enough to make clothes, allowing us to move into new habitats, so we did because we could. The natives in Africa still don’t wear clothes.
So it’s not that humans are less equipped than other animals, we’re MORE equipped (with a big smart brain and dextrous tool-using hands), and so we’ve been able to inhabit a WAY bigger range of different conditions than other animals.
Think about those other animals. Can a lion or a deer live in the Gobi desert and the Amazon rainforest and Siberia? Humans can.
The most ELI5 answer would be that we don’t need to make protective clothing from another animal’s fur or skin.
Our range would be greatly reduced if we didn’t though as many animals have smaller ranges based on their bodies. Polar bears can’t live in the heat of the Caribbean, many snakes cannot live in areas where the Winters go below zero for extended periods of time, etc… Without clothing we would not be able to live in colder climates and we have also lost some abilities due to wearing clothes for tens of thousands of years.
“I was born without claws, fangs and scales so i forged them in fire and crafted them of iron”
Processing other animals into something wearable requires a lot of manual dexterity so you need something like opposable thumbs. And we have the opposable thumb market cornered.
> where are all the other animals that need to rely on clothing to supplement a protective outer layer
There are a few. As one example caddisfly larvae create wearable armor for themselves out of small stones and twigs, another is juvenile coconut crabs which sometimes make protective coverings out of coconut shells. Octopuses will sometimes create temporary protective casings out of coconut shells or other found objects to escape from danger.
We adapted away from fur so that we could sweat. This is because humans are originally adapted for long-distance running and regulating body temperature is key to that. We can’t outrun most animals but we can track them forever.
Eventually our ancestors would exhaust them and kill them. The other thing we are adapted for is throwing spears. This is a key reason why so many of our sports revolve around running and throwing. This is what we do.
It’s not so different from hermit crabs use shells to cover their bodies.
Early clothes tended to protect our most sensitive areas from the sun or raw weather or rough surfaces. Seashells are kind of uncomfortable for humans to move around in, though, so we went with animal skins instead.
We maxxed out our evolution points for the brain,hands,and all the goofy things that allowed us in this current situation.
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