From Melissa Hogenboom at BBC:
Unlike hairy chimpanzees and bonobos – and all other primates – most of our skin is on display. We have evolved this way, even though fur is beneficial: it insulates and protects the skin, and in some cases acts as a useful camouflage. So if it is so advantageous, why did we lose so much of it?
Many speculations follow.
“It would be [an] enormous advantage to be able to spend the entire midday foraging, finding mates or fighting enemies,” he says. “Sweating allows that, and for sweat to be efficient you need to be mostly hairless. That is the reason why sweating is a useful thing and hence why hair loss is a useful thing.”
Our sweaty hairlessness, the theory goes, allowed us to hunt for longer, chasing nutritious large game that eventually helped give us the energy we needed to fuel growing brains. More.
Strange, then, that so few other life forms that could grow hair ever decided to go bald.
The Darwinian propensity to try to derive characteristics such as consciousness (“growing brains”) from factors that may be incidental is becoming ridiculous but political correctness prevents anyone noting it as such.
See also: Human origins: The war of trivial explanations
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