Why Humans Have Little to No Body Hair Compared to Other Mammals: The Scientific Explanation

KOMPAS.com – Almost all mammals that live on land have fur covering their bodies, from mice to chimpanzees.

But there is something interesting and also a mystery, namely why humans have little or almost no body hair compared to most other mammals.

Also read: Why do humans sleep less than other primates?

Studies also reveal why human body hair can disappear.

Hair on the human body

Quoting Science Daily, Monday (6/11/2023) a study conducted by scientists at the University of Utah Health and the University of Pittsburgh found that humans have the gene to cover all body hair but evolution has deactivated it.

“We’ve taken a creative approach by using biodiversity to study genetics itself. This helps us pinpoint regions of the genome that contribute to something important to us,” said Nathan Clark, Ph.D., a human geneticist at the University of Utah Health.

To uncover the mystery of the loss of fur in humans, researchers looked for genes in hairless animals that evolved more quickly than furry animals.

“When animals are under evolutionary pressure to lose fur, the genes that code for fur become less important,” explains Clark.

“So genetic changes may be responsible for feather loss. Other changes may be additional damage after feathers stop growing,” he continued.

Also read: What Makes Us Human and How Are We Different from Primates?

The study, published in the journal eLife, could ultimately lead to new ways to restore hair after baldness and chemotherapy or in people with disorders that cause hair loss.

The benefits of being hairless

Meanwhile there are several benefits when humans do not have feathers.

According to the Independent, this allows body heat to be lost through sweat. This was important when early humans started walking on two legs and started developing larger brains.

“An overheated brain would be very dangerous. This means there is strong evolutionary pressure to develop ways to eliminate excess body heat through evaporation of sweat on the skin,” said Nina Jablonski, professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University.

It was the main reason for hair loss in humans more than 1 million years ago.

“Perhaps the most acceptable hypothesis is that we lost most of the hair on our bodies as an adaptation to better remove heat from our bodies, in other words for thermal regulation,” said Jablonski again.

The loss of body hair is also part of the adaptation to become a bipedal animal that is very active in the open environments of equatorial Africa.

However, skin without fur will be more susceptible to sun damage than skin covered with fur.

Also read: Why Didn’t All Primates Evolve into Humans?

“Dark pigmentation to protect against sun damage almost certainly develops at the same time as body hair is lost,” adds Jablonski.

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2023-11-09 04:00:00
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