Human evolution and fur

[fuckass365]

So I was watching Ancient Aliens (I know, I know) and the dude with crazy hair brought up a good point. Why did we evolve to be furless just to have to kill animals and wear their furs to survive the cold in ancient times? Anyone have a good reason for this?

[5thHorseman]

Because we are from a part of the world that is particularly warm, the Savannah. Just a guess.

And given that we are decendents of apes, who are 'furry', we must have evolved away from the fur.

[fuckass365]

Because we are from a part of the world that is particularly warm, the Savannah. Just a guess.

And given that we are decendents of apes, who are 'furry', we must have evolved away from the fur.

I suppose, but didn't we have ancestors in snowy regions as well? They migrated to the snowy areas and evolved to lose fur? Makes no sense lol

[john2find]

So I was watching Ancient Aliens (I know, I know) and the dude with crazy hair brought up a good point. Why did we evolve to be furless just to have to kill animals and wear their furs to survive the cold in ancient times? Anyone have a good reason for this?

1.Evolution never means that it will always evolve to get the best out of a species. If this would have been so , than Breaded dog would have never inherited the diseases they poses. and all would have been evolved to e as intelligent like humans. People living in alaska would have grown furs by now.

2.also human had learned using fire since he has some sense. so probably bcz of fire human were able to keep them warm.

3. And its not for sure ht we have evolved out of apes that used to have furs on their body. may be we have come out of some reptile. the current theory of "human eveolved outta ape" is just a predicaiton due to DNA match. but it never means that we are for sure from same ancestors.

[5thHorseman]

I think we're all traceable to Africa, it'd take millions of years for us to evolve to suit freezing regions, we have only been a species for at most 500,000 years, but most likely 250,000 years.

[fuckass365]

So I was watching Ancient Aliens (I know, I know) and the dude with crazy hair brought up a good point. Why did we evolve to be furless just to have to kill animals and wear their furs to survive the cold in ancient times? Anyone have a good reason for this?

3. And its not for sure ht we have evolved out of apes that used to have furs on their body. may be we have come out of some reptile. the current theory of "human eveolved outta ape" is just a predicaiton due to DNA match. but it never means that we are for sure from same ancestors.

We share a common ancestor with modern apes... not lizards.


Welcome btw.

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I think we're all traceable to Africa, it'd take millions of years for us to evolve to suit freezing regions, we have only been a species for at most 500,000 years, but most likely 250,000 years.

Yes but traceable as hairless apes or traceable as in Australopithecus?

[Erinome]

That's a good question. What 5th said is a good suggestion, and it makes sense, but there's one problem with that. Bare skin actually makes primates more vulnerable to heat. It's bad news for regulating body temperature because naked skin absorbs more energy in the sunlight, and loses more in the cold of night.

There is some speculation that humans went through an aquatic phase, and needed to shed the hair to be faster swimmers, which would also explain the slight webbing of our fingers.

My favorite theory is the parasite theory. Body lice spread so many diseases, such as typhus, and we adapted in order to survive. I think that theory, combined with sexual selection, played a huge role in the loss of human body hair. The women and men with less body hair were viewed as more attractive to the opposite sex, and if I'm not mistaken, that preference holds strong to this day.

What I think is really interesting is that scientists were able to determine when humans started wearing clothes by studying the DNA of all different types of lice. Check it out-

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/lice.html

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We share a common ancestor with modern apes... not lizards.

We share a common ancestor with all living things, including reptiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain

[Anomalocaris]

We share a common ancestor with modern apes... not lizards.

Technically, we shared a common ancestor with lizards also. That common ancestor lived about 320 million years. Of course we share a much more recent common ancestor with apes, possibly as recent as 6 million years ago.

As to when we lost our fur, and when we pushed into areas that required us to kill furred animals and don their skin, we actually know a great deal from DNA evidence. Not human DNA, but louse DNA.

Louse (the small, itch, icky kind, not the fat religious conservative kind) are very particular to the species they infest. Typically one species of louse infest one species of animals. We filthy unhygenic humans are somewhat unusual in that we are commonly host to to not one, but 3 different spieces of lice. One type of lice live in our head hair (Pediculus humans capitis), and another in our crotch hair (Pthirus pubis), and a third live in our clothing (Pediculus humans corporis). The body louse and head louse are similar, where as the head louse and crotch louse are noticeably different.

Interestingly, crotch lice are similar to a different type of louse that commonly live on chimps. But DNA evidence suggests crotch louse and head louse diverged and became separate speices about 800,000 years ago. This suggests that prior to about a million years ago, humans played host to only one species of louse, which we inherited from our ape ancestors and which coevolved with us. The fact that our ancestors prior to a million years hated only a single louse species suggests louse were free to travel all over our bodies and intermingle. This suggests as recently as a million years ago, long after the last Australopithecus dies out, our immediate ancestors still had quite a bit of hair all over their bodies to allow a louse to travel from head to foot.

Appearently sometime around 800,000 years ago, our ancestors had begun to acquire the unique pattern of hair that characterize modern humans - extensive head hair, considerable pubic hair, with very little hair in between. So louse that were in the head could no longer mingle with the ones in the crotch, and two different species of human louse (head louse and crotch louse) evolved.

So where does the their species, the body louse fit in? well body louse are very similar to head louse. Genetic evidence suggests they diverged about 70,000 years ago. Body louse live a life style different from either head or crotch louse. Head and crotch louse must live on the human body. Body louse can live on human clothing. This suggested that humans first started to wear close fitting, furry clothing about 70,000 years ago.

[popeyespappy]

3. And its not for sure ht we have evolved out of apes that used to have furs on their body. may be we have come out of some reptile. the current theory of "human eveolved outta ape" is just a predicaiton due to DNA match. but it never means that we are for sure from same ancestors.

Ignorance is bliss the old saying goes, but I’ve never believed it. Believing that there is even a possibility that humans are more closely related to lizards than to primates requires dismissing everything we’ve ever learned about evolution.

[Phil]

3. And its not for sure ht we have evolved out of apes that used to have furs on their body. may be we have come out of some reptile. the current theory of "human eveolved outta ape" is just a predicaiton due to DNA match. but it never means that we are for sure from same ancestors.

Did you learn evolution from David Icke?