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just thinking about how cats are born with very weak internal heat generation (it's done by the liver) and how humans are different, we have big livers because we have almost no hair, most of the hair is only in the less fleshy more bony parts of our body, where insulation is needed.

i wonder if this is because we were from bipedal apes who grew big brains for catching animals and figured out how to skin them and wear their fur, and this also implies that we must have had a need to increase our insulation meaning that the pressure of glaciation periods probably drove us to do this.

first we lived in the equatorial regions, and then we became dominant there, and lost most of our hair and instead sweat a lot to stay cool, and then we spread north and south and needed cold protection and started wearing skins.

i love wearing leather, especially soft leathers like rabbit and goat and shoes... they look so cool also.

another example of how retarded veganism is too, you literally can't make more thermally insulating materials than animal hair.

Neowulf 8mo ago

Deep ketosis probably has something to do with it as well. Human babies are the fattest land animal, even more so that baby seals. That same brain we use to hunt is made of fat, ketones, cholesterol. In northern climates the only food source in winter is large fatty mammals, megafauna, with a much higher percentage of body fat than smaller mammals. You are warmer in ketosis, higher internal temperature, with higher heartbeat stroke volume. Like having an internal oil fire instead of internal plant-kindling fire.

I expect body hair loss was influenced by sexual selection, which can be a rational or irrational, an aesthetic or utilitarian, feedback loop. I like to think a newly unlocked higher value set led us to grasp toward something more aesthetic. Probably a meta-mix of reasons.

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ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 8mo ago

yeah, the more hairy the less ability to shed heat, that would have been a survival pressure causing death by sunstroke

also, less, but still hairy, has a benefit of wicking sweat away faster as it is only cooling if it gets cooler fast enough

there isn't many animals that sweat, i think pigs are another one, also note that the domestic pig is also with very high fat content and domesticated pigs are less hairy than wild boars

so probably, humans breeding pigs for the good fat levels also forced the animals to grow less hair, and thus also they sweat

Neowulf 8mo ago

Very interesting about the pigs, did not know that.

Also the wicking ability - yes rate of change of heat loss.

So we evolved toward more intensive energy usage, more Watts per kg - generate more energy flow (enabling higher functions, create order, structure and complexity) as well as to dissipate more as needed (allowing those functions to survive pressures/chaos).