Seriously, a bad sunburn could limit our ability to survive in the wild. I’ve had a few so bad I could barely move and I had a super high fever. Desn’t that happen to animals? How do they manage?
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I have hairless dogs and I need to limit the time they are out in the sun. If there are going to be out for a long time we need to put “tshirts” on them to protect them.
My neighbor had one of those bold Mexican dogs and she would put sunscreen on it when going to the park with him . I thought it was funny but it made all the sense.
We are more exposed to UVA and UVB. Although I don’t know much about animals and UV I’d assume they can burn too since they have skin. We just don’t have a heavy layer protecting us.
Notice when you go to the beach all those white pastie bodies… that’s not normal
Most of us are not use to being in the wild.
Look at people who live in the country/farms, they have weathered tanned skin
Most things, people included, are well-adapted to the environment in which they evolved.
The people who need sunscreen are generally those whose ancestors evolved in the less sunny climates.
I hear you. The reason this is a question is that society is still so skewed toward a designer led evolution system. The Great Architect is the proposed religious answer to reconciling god and genesis.
You have to change your mode of thought – its not that its advantageous or that nature designed us or we “adapted” — its just that it didn’t kill us.
People with fair skin, like Northern European redheads – wouldn’t have survived in sunny climates. But because they didn’t have to, they/we didn’t die out. Its not just about what made you successful but if it wasn’t something that stopped you from not procreating, then it doesn’t matter.
An example is male pattern baldness, heart disease, etc. If the condition occurred after the possibility of producing off-spring, then the genes will survive. Obviously, if the condition was so severe, that families couldn’t raise their off-spring that would have an impact.
Yea your premise has some misconceptions there.
Pale people get sunburnt – The rest of us with darker shades don’t need sunscreen, maybe for UV protection only.
I lived in the tropics with very intense midday sun. It’s not wise to go out without sunscreen (radiation) but I do anyway. I’ve never been sunburnt in my life so I have no idea what’s that like.
In addition to the other comments about other animals also protecting themselves in different ways, if a human get sunburnt continously our skin darkens and we develop some additional protection. That’s until we develop skin cancer that is. But evolution generally does not care what happens to us after child bearing and rearing age and evolution is generally completely fine with you drying at the ripe old age of 35 🙂
They don’t? My friends dog died from skin cancer because she got burned too many times while sunbathing
I saw a stray dog 2 weeks ago that had lost a lot of fur. It was bright pink! Absolutely burnt 🙁
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