• Question: why do we have hair in funny places?

    Asked by sussim24 to Alexandra, Dean, Jess, Luisa, Sian on 25 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sian Foch-Gatrell

      Sian Foch-Gatrell answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      If you mean hair under the armpits and in the pubic regions, it is because these hairs coincide with our apocrine sweat glands (the other type of sweat glands – eccrine glands – are found all over the body). These glands are much more involved in our general body odour which plays a major part in human sexual attraction.

    • Photo: Dean Whittaker

      Dean Whittaker answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Because we evolved from a common ancestor that is also an ancestor to monkeys (or apes, I can’t remember which). Back when we were evolving, keeping warm by having hair everywhere was a big advantage. When it stopped becoming an advantage, when we started living in warmer caves etc. we lost much of our hair. Some places it appears it still had a little advantage. I’m not sure what these are though!

    • Photo: Alexandra Kamins

      Alexandra Kamins answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I’m not sure. We used to have hair all over (many hundreds of thousands of years ago) but we lost most of it, probably because it’s easier to stay pest-free (eew, lice!) without body hair. Some biologists think the hair on our head protected humans as they lived on the hot, hot plains of Africa…. but I don’t know for sure!

    • Photo: Luisa Ostertag

      Luisa Ostertag answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Where are funny places? In ears and noses? 😉
      I really don’t know. (But it’s probably a relic from our ancestors …)

    • Photo: Jessica Housden

      Jessica Housden answered on 25 Jun 2010:

      It must be left over from the way we have evolved – and if only people with very little hair reproduced then humans could evolve to have no hair at all! For now though, we just accept it!

Comments