Human evolution and fur

[Faith No More]

Lol, it was a thing they were doing on bigfoot.

So he believes in anything ridiculous.

[fuckass365]

Lol, it was a thing they were doing on bigfoot.

So he believes in anything ridiculous.

Well not really, have you seen the show? The dude the meme was inspired by isn't always there, normally he doesn't talk as much as the others.

They had some Bigfoot whackjobs on there and they brought up that bigfoot could have been the natural evolution of our ancestor and we became what we are today via alien intervention.

Farfecthed and retarded, yes but I still enjoy the show.

[Nine]

Ancient aliens is certainly an interesting experience..

[fuckass365]

Ancient aliens is certainly an interesting experience..

They have some interesting things on there sometimes. The episode on the stones of Pumapunku was pretty good.

[le_procyon]

Maybe it came out through the topic, I didn't read it all, but, as far as I know, we lost our fur because it allows for a great number of bugs and that kind of disease-carriers to hitch-hike our bodies. And that's bad

[R-e-n-n-a-t]

I do have to point out that it's a matter of personal preference whether more or less hair is favored. Eighty years ago, it would have been the opposite, making this seem more like a matter of style than genetics. Note that we, as a species, lived in temperate regions in Africa for far longer than we have been removed from it. This means that although we don't need to shed heat so quickly now and live in colder regions, evolution hasn't had close to enough time to catch up, and with technology outpacing natural selection, maybe it never will.

As for your leg hair, if we evolved from a furry species of ape, this means that the amount of fur would decrease gradually. Those of us who live in temperate regions may still be getting less hairy at a snail's pace, assuming that greater access to food and technology doesn't stop or greatly hinder natural selection by ensuring that almost all members of a species in a given area survive and reproduce.

[The Grand Nudger]

Your leg hair is handled by the gene that codes for keratin, as I mentioned in my post. It's spindly and sparse because this gene does not code thick strong fur like the corresponding gene in a chimp would. It doesn't have to, your skin is much better weatherproofing than a chimps skin (which is better weatherproofing than most itself). However, this little bit of genetic magic is a "gift" from a common ancestor, so we both have hair, ours is simply different than theirs.

Let wonder lead you to knowledge....

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Human genomic DNA containing two type II keratin genes, one coding for keratin 1 (K1, a 68-kD basic protein) and another closely linked type II gene 10–15 kb upstream (K?, gene product unknown), was isolated on a single cosmid clone. EcoRI restriction fragments of the cosmid were subcloned into pGEM-3Z, and specific probes comprising the C-terminal coding and 3 noncoding regions of the two genes were constructed. The type II keratin genes were localized by in situ hybridization of the subcloned probes to normal human lymphocyte chromosomes. In a total of 70 chromosome spreads hybridized with the K? probe (gHK?-3, PstI, 800 bp), 36 of the 105 grains observed were on chromosome 12, and 32 of these were clustered on the long arm near the centromere (12q11–13). In 100 labeled metaphases hybridized with the K1 probe (gHK1–3, BamHI-PstI, 2100 bp), 53 grains localized to chromosome 12 and 46 of these were found in the same region (q11–13). Therefore, both the gene for human keratin 1, a specific marker for terminal differentiation in mammalian epidermis, and another closely linked unknown type II keratin gene (K?, 10–15 kb upstream of K1) are on the long arm (q11–13) of human chromosome 12.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/pv63787x2647780p/

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That the sort of explanation you're after?

[Minimalist]

Ancient aliens is certainly an interesting experience..

I have a baptist friend who asked me about Ancient Aliens and I had to tell her, " you do understand they are suggesting that your god was ET, right?"

She hasn't mentioned it since.

[fuckass365]

So in a nutshell, my legs are just fucking awesome.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah actually, baddass piece of biological machinery, spent about 3,500 million years in R & D before reaching it's current iteration and getting slapped onto one of the newest protoypes as part of the advanced data processing and performance package. Sure, there are bugs, but the boys down in engineering and QC think that the features outweigh them (and let me just add here, this design has been put through the ringer).