Why did humans lose their fur?

aquatic apes, duh

im still hairy as fuck...?

Found this:

>Why humans lost their body hair: to stop their brains from overheating as we evolved. The need to keep a cool head is why man became a naked ape according to scientists who believe they can finally explain why humans are the only primate to lose their body fur.

Not sure about that.

>>7868877

That doesn't feel like an adequate explanation to me given that we still have hair on our heads.

>>7868897
Not that guy but from what I know, the hair on our heads is a way for heat to escape our bodies. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

>>7868901
iirc all hair follicles help sweet drain away from our bodies keepin us cooler or something like that, so that would be the opposite of what it should be

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>>7868865
Because we're aquatic apes

Preventing disease. Insects and other bugs would reproduce on your fur.

>>7868865
Managing body heat, allowing us to sweat.
Fur acts as insulation and more often the not animals with fur or hair don't sweat.
The advantage is we can exert ourselves to a much greater degree without having the dangerous ramifications other mammels would.

How do I know this? Im a gazelle that died of heat exhaustion after some niggers chased me across a broiling savahanna some afternoon.
They stabbed me.... and touched me. The touched me, they did.

Men find women with less body hair more attractive. Seems logical.

>>7868970
BUt why would that attraction even develop in the first place? On might guess that >>7868947 is right and the women that are less hairy were seen as healthier and had a bigger chance of producing offsprings

>>7868970
>>7868973
Is this a joke that is going over my head? or are you guys serious?

Less hairy can imply younger and thus less likely to have been inseminated? I'm guessing here. Hairy men can also be seen as manlier and more likely to be brutish? More dangerous for the woman? All in all it comes down to natural selection, and I imagine it has more to do with attraction than survival.

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>>7868983
Not a joke.
Sexual attraction can result in developing features that have no survival advantage.
Thank god we are not stuck with two feet long antlers

>>7869050
Well there still had to be some benefit to being hairless because it's an obvious disadvantage considering how it makes you vulnerable to cold.

>>7868970
That's cultural.

Not much of an end in itself.

>>7869119
Not really, peacocks plumage have no survival advantage and instead gives the peacocks horribly bad gait.

But I doubt de furring have anything to do with sexual selection, it might be simply to save energy, growing lots of hair takes a lot of energy, or it could be that when we started using animal hides as clothes body hair became unnecessary, also, iirc, we have a sweating system better adapted for long distance running and body hair loss might be part of that.

>>7869137
Maybe so, but it appears to me that women till this day shave off their hair to become more attractive to mates. I am not aware of any culture where women prefer being hairy. Anyway if mom has less hair then her child will as well as forth... Give it enough time an we are a close to hairless primate.

>>7869119
Doesn't really matter with fire and the ability to kill stuff and Wear it

>>7868865
They didnt lose it. Monkeys developed from humans, not the other way. The progress is still going on today.

>>7868865
Because God made us without it

>>7869362
>Doesn't really matter with fire and the ability to kill stuff and Wear it

>>7869167
>or it could be that when we started using animal hides as clothes body hair became unnecessary

Humans were naked for about a million years before they started wearing clothing. The clothing replacing body hair theory doesn't hold up.

I think the fact that we have evolved for long distance travel may be part of the key. Being covered in body hair would weight us down and cause us to heat up during multi mile travels. Also, hair would cause more wind resistance and require more energy during sprinting.

I read somewhere that we used to hunt our prey by simply continuing to follow it until it was worn down.

>>7868865
Tl;dr Heat
the sweat degraded the follicles

>>7868901
>>7868909
As someone who has shaved their head and has grown 3+ feet of hair, that explanation is utter bullshit. The more hair you have the hotter you are. The less hair you have the cooler you are.

>>7869902
Explain elephants

>>7868865
To fuck with furfags.

>>7868865
The word "Why" implies a reason or purpose. Biology does not have a purpose or reason. That's like me asking what purpose does rolling tumble weed survive? The tumble weed simple rolls without a reason or purpose.

Humans had fur almost on par with apes a very long time ago. However, there was a change in a gene made made human look hairless today.

So we can ridicule furries

>>7868865
who is sperm germ?

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>>7869471
>Because
>God

Kek

>Such science
>So understanding
>Many biology

>Why did humans lose their fur?
Humans are endurance hunters; they kill their prey by chasing it until it collapses, and winning the stamina battle. To support that, humans have a body build that supports long-term physical exertion without overheating; which means naked skin and the ability to sweat.

>>7868865
Because the genetic aberrations (modern humans) that developed no hair were still able to survive and pass those sets of genes, because we slaughtered animals and wore their flesh. I'm guessing through time humans just had more babies with no haired humans than they did with fuzzy humans. After a long time it seemed to have been dominate set of genes in the population to have but a few patches of hair on the body.

>>7870134
You cannot ignore that environmental factors can steer evolutionary change.

For example, you can't ignore the correlation between humans with a higher melanin content are closer to the equator than those with a lower melanin content.

While mutations are rudderless in nature, what mutation gets to succeed while others do not does beg the question "why."

the better question is why do I have hairs sprouting around my nipples and almost nowhere else

>>7870255
Because you are a mutant.

because those with less fur/hair were not selected against

>>7870255
Chest whiskers perhaps. I don't know why the male body needs to protect the nipple though.

>>7870285
You can just as well argue that humans with more hair WERE selected against. Doesn't explain anything.

>>7870290
gj saying nothing

>>7870320
That was the point.

>>7868865
Fire.

>>7870376
Early man's mixtapes were pretty good desu senpai

My psychology teacher told us that it was because we began reproducing in the missionary position

kek

More seriously,
Probably >>7870225 and >>7868970
This is probably the result of a long selection by females human, read about sexual selection, fitness, good genes and fitness.

A better question is, how can we regain our furry bodies?

>>7870401
What about less hair meant they were more fit?

One thing to remember: we are the only great ape capable of swimming. The other ones, that are all stronger and scarier than us, are too dense and sink in water.
Also, foreskin is an adaptation for underwater sex without pumping a bunch of pond water up in there.

>>7869050
>>7868959

It's about managing body heat not sexual attraction lol.

>>7868877
It doesnt make sense. If that were true, then our heads wouldve been the first thing to go bald.

>>7868931
kek, innovative way of fat apologism

>>7868959
Basically this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

>>7870401
fitness follows selection

At the bare minimum, we were hairless 14000 years ago.

Some have said that its because we were aquatic apes that spent a great deal of time in the ocean fishing.

Some have hypothesized we lost our fur in the ice age when we started wearing clothes and wet fur was more dangerous than wet bare skin.

Some have hypothesized that it made it harder for skin parasites to live on us because others could see whats living on us.

Some hypothesize that we became acclimated to ice age weather and the warming climate made thinner fur more survivable.

Some even hypothesize that hominids were hairless 1.7million years ago and all these other hypotheses are inconsequential.

As stated at the beginning, the only hard proof we have is that hairlessness must be at least 14000 years old or older.

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>>7868865
You're looking at this backwards. Humans have "lost their fur" because hundreds of thousands of years ago *smart* bipedal apes without fur bred more and or survived more, than *smart* bipedal apes with fur. The reason is irrelevant at this stage... Unless you're into hairy people.

>>7870873
So like the spot of orange on a penguin.

Because just because.

>>7870871
I think the aquatic ape theory may have some ground.

Filipinos are very hairless and they live among the islands, for example.

>>7870134
Or you can be a little less pedantic, and realize that what he clearly meant is "what are the influences that resulted in the fur-free humans we see today"

>>7870915
Yeah, but the peoples of the mediterranean are some of the stereotypically hairiest

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>>7870225
>Humans are endurance hunters; they kill their prey by chasing it until it collapses, and winning the stamina battle. To support that, humans have a body build that supports long-term physical exertion without overheating; which means naked skin and the ability to sweat.

Fuck Christopher McDougall and his shitty pop-sci book.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589410000803

>>7868897
If you don't have a hat, you need hair on your head to protect it from the sun.

I think it's likely that the body hair went sparse after our ancestors started to wear clothing. Then thick body hair just became a hygiene problem, and a layer you couldn't take off to cool down on a hot day. A crest of hair on your head that grows long is something an intelligent person can work with for a variety of purposes, aesthetic or practical, and a way to continue to have something to groom socially (without needing to strip down), which is a deeply-rooted social primate instinct.

We evolved with our early technology. Prototypical man was the cape-wearer, the canteen-hauler, the rock-thrower, the club-swinger and spear-thruster, with chip-knives and fire to cut and cook food.

not sure if anything im gonna say is right
- human skin is dry, pH is slightly lower, and is pretty good at protecting against pathogens
- sexual attraction?
- certain regions of climate provided that fur was unnecessary and proved evolutionary favorable for our ancestors

>>7870915
Aquatic ape theory has merit, but it can not be the only reason. Humans werent evolving into mermaids. There are also aquatic mammals with fur, like seals and sealions.

>>7870965
Three continents and two of them still have men with very hairy bodies.

Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, look it up. we spent some period of our history in or mostly in water, explaining lack of fur, brain dev/seafood, diving reflex, subcutaneious fat. hard to prove, but it sure explains a lot. probably became this way around the Danakil Horst in Ethiopia.

>>7869836
ooh, long distance travel, thats a new idea, i LIKE it. relates to our ability to run long distances too. this is the only idea ive heard aside from aquatic ape that explains at least some of our odd features.

>>7871035
Not true. If the origin of man is north east africa and the mediteranean, we fished and swam but spento more than 2/3 of our time on land.

>>7868865
because our dna was spliced with aliens when they came down and raped all the monkeys

>>7871046
the truth is out there

>>7869836
>Humans were naked for about a million years before they started wearing clothing.
I can't believe that humans mastered fire a million years before it occurred to them to wrap a hide around them on a cold night.

>>7871079
>>7869836
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair#Human_hairlessness
>The general hairlessness of humans in comparison to related species may be due to loss of functionality in the pseudogene KRTHAP1 (which helps produce keratin) in the human lineage about 240,000 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothing#Origin_of_clothing
>clothing may have been used as long ago as 650 thousand years ago

It sure doesn't sound certain that humans were hairless for a million years before they started wearing clothing. Actually, it sounds like estimates of human hairlesssness and clothing both range from one or two hundred thousand years to "lol, idunno, we just found some skeletons".

I think it's unlikely that meat-eating humans with fire and knives didn't use the larger skins for warmth, camoflage, and protection from sun and rain. You just have to cut a hole in a dry hide to have a rough rawhide poncho.

>>7871125
There are still African tribes today that spend pretty much all their existence naked and have little body hair.

The idea that clothing replaced fur isn't entirely solid. Humans lost their fur, but not because it found a replacement.

so they would be more fuckable

>>7871203
The existence of the furry community might poke a little hole in that theory, also beastiality. Humans as a species just don't seem too picky about what they fuck

>>7871125
>>7871079

>It sure doesn't sound certain that humans were hairless for a million years before they started wearing clothing

humans lived in hot savannas when they lost hair, its not until ice age started that they started wearing clothes.

>>7871210
both bestiality and furry communities are small enough to not matter.
sexual selection probably have some play since women are naturally less hairy than man.

>>7868865

It's metabolically costly.

You can get more energy from food if you aren't spending proteins to make unnecessary hair.

>>7868865
Humans aren't the fastest predators. When we lived in the hot savannas and had to hunt it was a matter of endurance. We had to sweat to cool off our bodies to be able to run longer. So our expendable hair follicles became sebaceous glands.

>>7871585
this

>>7868865
For no reason. Evolution is random. Nature is chaos.

>>7868865
She reminds me of a grill I party frequently with in the weekends. Still haven't fuck her :'(

>>7871585
I don't like how you people say that a need brings about a change. It gives people the wrong understanding of evolution, fuels anti-evolutionists, and discounts the massive amount of death and ending of genetic lineages that takes place to become what is.

>>7872167
Cut him some slack, everyone here knows it's not the right way to say it, but trying to phrase it from a non-anthropic viewpoint is less natural than just phrasing it how we speak normally

>>7868865
I bet she's tripping on shrooms. God I miss being in touch with nature.

Because we sweat to cool down. Because we became hunters who run after their pretty, we are not only smartest species but we also are adapted for endurance running. We cool down by sweating while running into the wind. Human body is a giant radiator.