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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.

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Discussion

Tekkadan, ゲロゲロ! 🐸 8mo ago

"a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals"

How much animal hair does humanity need to survive or thrive?

Can animals be harvested for their hair/fur ethically? Of course this can be done, to the extent that humanity isn't dying to cold and animals aren't suffering as a direct result.

Can leather be harvested ethically? Of course, animals die without our intervention.

Veganism suggests we should avoid creating unnecessary suffering.

As far as our thermal insulation, it's an interesting learning opportunity. I don't have an answer to it- my knee jerk reaction is to suggest that the adoption of fire making would potentially insulate us enough to evolve away from a full body of hair.

Upon investigation, that is suggested, however there are some other interesting considerations in this article:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-did-humans-evolve-lose-fur-180970980/

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 8mo ago

lol, i see i found a vegan

i keep a cat and i treat him very well, in fact i rescued him from the street and he had terrible gingevitis, ear infection and sinus infection, and 700 euros later he's a happy kitty, tearing up my place and bugging me by cleaning himself before he goes to sleep while i'm trying to sleep

i'm a big fan of leather and hunting as well, and this doesn't make me complicit in unnecessary brutality being done by people i don't know in the industry. they are psychopaths and their vicious behaviour will be the cause of their punishment later, and i guarantee anyone who thinks it's ok to beat around and cause unneccessary pain while harvesting livestock is also cruel to other humans around them, why would they be selective

any philosophy that imputes guilt upon those who have no knowledge of the treatment of animal products that they consume is a psychopaths game of accusation of complicity without proof of complicity, and this is a psychopathic behaviour in itself, one of the things you always see psychopaths doing is trying to drag everyone down with them and claiming that we are all like them

we are not all like them

not only that, but we are evolved as eaters of animal flesh, our whole biology depends on the high energy content of animal fats, the hormones we make from the cholesterols, and the proteins are required by our big brains which require a lot of amino acids to function (and fats, and cholestorol, to build)

you want to blame humans for unnecessary violence to animals when there is a fast, and relatively painless way to slaughter the animal, blame the ones that are doing it, i had nothing to do with that, this is the nature of my existence to be a human and to not be healthy without eating animal flesh and with that need, why waste the hair and skins and bones of the animal, that would be disrespectful to the life it gave. as would brutalising the animal for no reason, or confining it in unnatural conditions and feeding it unnatural food (like feedlot and grain feeding).

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 8mo ago

also, all of the points i made in the OP about why we became mostly hairless was correct - because we started out in hot environments - savannah and jungles, and because we ate primarily meat, needed to power the brain which is needed to be a predator (all predators have bigger brains)

Tekkadan, ゲロゲロ! 🐸 8mo ago

> any philosophy that imputes guilt upon those who have no knowledge of the treatment of animal products that they consume is a psychopaths game of accusation of complicity without proof of complicity

This is rational and I don't disagree. There is just as much of a divide between vegans as there is within other communities.

However I would argue the average consumer has ample knowledge and awareness to the ongoing issues. Being misinformed is not an excuse for complicity either. I wouldn't attack someone for simply consuming animal products myself, but instead offer plenty of suggestions for more ethical consumption.

As per your last point, I do blame those who do it, and choose to campaign against them, often to my own dismay. I didn't know how you consume until you told me. I respect your choice to consume on your own terms- not beholden to evil companies. That is why I still use Nostr, despite being a major contrarian in this space. It is mostly due in part to consolidated wealth and non-sovereign agriculture that we have seen a major decline in balanced food accessibility and more organic consumables, such as textiles and devices.

I encourage people to vote with their $ if they want to see change.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 8mo ago

exactly, don't eat gigacorp GMO grain based protein food and inadequate, and moderately toxic seed oils. eat ethically regenerative farmed meat from your local farmers, if you can.

i didn't make the decision to have a body that is currently in a bad state of health because of seed oils and GMO grain proteins, and violent pieces of shit working in animal farming. i had no choice in this so i do what i can

it's incredibly difficult to find good food and you can't live without food, and i don't have the money together yet to have my goat ranch. so i'm going to have to absolve myself of whatever shit is going on out of my sight until i have the money because it's far bigger a picture than this one narrow part of it that vegans focus on.

it's the money, it's the government, it's flaccid, scared stupid people who have been run ragged with the rat race and because they don't know about the causes of this, or the ethical quandary, aren't demanding real food and instead are going to drug dealers, posing as doctors, to get treated for the disease caused by eating poisoned and wrong kinds of food for their bodies. the number of issues that have to be solved for this on a society-wide scale are stupendous, but as an individual, if i can escape the rat race and get my own little farm, i can produce my food myself and stop having to do so much effort and suffer so much symptoms of the poisoning of my food by not using all that poisonous shit.

i mean, several times during the grape growing season, i smell the vile smell of insecticides, which i know are impacting my health and the health of the animals around me, just as one little example. i can see by the state of the health of the plants in the ornamental garden my landlord keeps next to my place that there is a lot of nutrient deficiencies in the soil which if they were remedied by the grape growers, would probably negate the need for these poisons.

so, yeah, from a pragmatic perspective and a perspective of self-care i'm doing my best to try and find good food that has been produced with as little bullshit as possible, until i can be my own farmer. and i'm not going to get to that stage unless i stay healthy and feed myself sufficiently well to be able to do my very mentally demanding work.

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.

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).