The hairlessness of humans compared to related species may be due to loss of fun ctionality in the pseudogene KRTHAP1 (which

helps produce keratin) in the human lineage about 240,000 years ago.[21] Mutations in the gene HR can lead to comple te hair loss, though this is not typical in humans.[22] In order to comprehend why humans are essentially hairless, it is essential to u nderstand that mammalian body hair is not merely an aesthetic characteristic; it protects the skin from wounds, bites, heat, cold, and UV radiation.[23] Additio nally, it can be used as a communication tool and as a camouflage.[24] To this e nd, it can be concluded that benefits stemming from the loss of human body hair must be great enough to outweigh the loss of these protective functions by naked ness. Humans are the only primate species that have undergone significant hair loss an d of the approximately 5000 extant species of mammal, only a handful are effecti vely hairless. This list includes elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, walru ses, pigs, whales and other cetaceans, and naked mole rats.[24] Most mammals hav e light skin that is covered by fur, and biologists believe that early human anc estors started out this way also. Dark skin probably evolved after humans lost t heir body fur, because the naked skin was vulnerable to the strong UV radiation as would be experienced in Africa. Therefore, evidence of when human skin darken ed has been used to date the loss of human body hair, assuming that the dark ski n was needed after the fur was gone. It was expected that dating the split of the ancestral human louse into two spec ies, the head louse and the pubic louse, would date the loss of body hair in hum an ancestors. However, it turned out that the human pubic louse does not descend from the ancestral human louse, but from the gorilla louse, diverging 3.3 milli on years ago. This suggests that humans had lost body hair (but retained head ha ir) and developed thick pubic hair prior to this date, were living in or close t o the forest where gorillas lived, and acquired pubic lice from butchering goril las or sleeping in their nests.[25][26] The evolution of the body louse from the head louse, on the other hand, places the date of clothing much later, some 100 ,000 years ago.[27][28] Balding, where terminal hair switches to vellus hair, usually occurs at around t hirty to forty years of age. In prehistoric times, most individuals did not surv ive to adulthood, let alone reaching their fourth decade[29] and therefore baldi ng tends to act as a signal of maturity. In women survival to such an advanced a ge is usually coupled with a decrease in a fertility (see menopause), but in men fertility is retained beyond middle-age. The persistence (but non-ubiquity) of balding in men, coupled with its general absence in women, suggests that there w as a selection pressure against balding in women (perhaps in the form of a press ure against signals of advancing age), but variations in hair patterns among men did not prevent their reproductive success leading to stable polymorphisms (per haps representing different mating strategies); for example some men could have benefitted from baldness by signalling advanced maturity and social status; whil e other men simulated the appearance of youth and vigor by retaining their hair. [citation needed] The soft, fine hair found on many nonhuman mammals is typically called fur. Most species evolved as the climate in Africa changed, to adjust their thermoreg ulation to the intense UV and sunlight at the equator, mostly by panting. Early hominids likely possessed fur similar to other large apes, but about 2.5 million years ago they developed a greater distribution of sweat glands[citation needed ] that enabled them to perspire over most of the body. It is not clear whether t he change in body hair appearance occurred before or after the development of sw eat glands. Humans have eccrine sweat glands all over their bodies.[30] Aside fr om the mammary glands that produce a specialized sweat called milk, most mammals just have apocrine sweat glands on their armpits and loin. The rest of their bo dy is covered in eccrine glands. There is a trend in primates to have increased eccrine sweat glands over the general surface of the body.[30] It is unclear to what degree other primates sweat in response to heat, however.

The sweat glands in humans could have evolved to spread from the hands and feet as the body hair changed, or the hair change could have occurred to facilitate s weating. Horses and humans are two of the few animals capable of sweating on mos t of their body, yet horses are larger and still have fully developed fur. In hu mans, the skin hairs lie flat in hot conditions, as the arrector pili muscles re lax, preventing heat from being trapped by a layer of still air between the hair s, and increasing heat loss by convection. Historically, some ideas have been advanced to explain the apparent hairlessness of humans, as compared to other species. Several hypotheses explained hairlessness as a thermoregulatory adaptation to ho t and dry savanna. The most known thermoregulatory hypothesis in modern paleoant hropology was proposed by Peter Wheeler (1984, 1985). He suggests that a need fo r decreased body hair originated as a response to climate change that began appr oximately 3 million years ago.[31][32] At this time, the earth entered a period of global cooling that had a dehumidifying effect on the main early human habita ts in East and Central Africa. Lush, wooded forests gave way to dry, grassland s avannah; because of this, early humans were required to travel farther in search of food and water. As early humans diverged from their chimpanzee-lineage, they also became omnivorous in order to maximize calorie intake, an important distin ction in a nutrient-scarce environment. Prey, however, are moving targets, and t hough early humans changed the traditionally ape-like appearance of the australo pithecines and adapted long, strong legs to facilitate sustained running, dense, hairy coats still posed a potentially fatal risk of causing overheating during the chase.[24] It is posited that thick hair got in the way of the sweat evapora ting, so humans evolved a sparser coat of fur. Although hair provides protection against harmful UV radiation, since our hominin ancestors were bipedal, only ou r heads were exposed to the noonday sun.[33] Humans kept the hair on our head wh ich reflects harmful UV rays, but our body hair was reduced. The rise in eccrine glands occurred on the genes that determine the fate of epidermal stem cells in human embryonic development. Another hypothesis for the thick body hair on humans proposes that Fisherian run away sexual selection played a role (as well as in the selection of long head ha ir), (see types of hair and vellus hair), as well as a much larger role of testo sterone in men. Sexual selection is the only theory thus far that explains the s exual dimorphism seen in the hair patterns of men and women. On average, men hav e more body hair than women. Males have more terminal hair, especially on the fa ce, chest, abdomen, and back, and females have more vellus hair, which is less v isible. The halting of hair development at a juvenile stage, vellus hair, would also be consistent with the neoteny evident in humans, especially in females, an d thus they could have occurred at the same time.[34] This theory, however, has significant holdings in today's cultural norms. There is no evidence that sexual selection would proceed to such a drastic extent over a million years ago when a full, lush coat of hair would most likely indicate health and would therefore be more likely to be selected for, not against, and not all human populations to day have sexual dimorphism in body hair. A further hypothesis is that human hair was reduced in response to ectoparasites .[35][36] The "ectoparasite" explanation of modern human nakedness is based on t he principle that a hairless primate would harbor fewer parasites. When our ance stors adopted group-dwelling social arrangements roughly 1.8 mya, ectoparasite l oads increased dramatically. Early humans became the only one of the 193 primate species to have fleas, which can be attributed to the close living arrangements of large groups of individuals. While primate species have communal sleeping ar rangements, these groups are always on the move and thus are less likely to harb or ectoparasites. Because of this, selection pressure for early humans would fav or decreasing body hair because those with thick coats would have more lethal-di sease-carrying ectoparasites and would thereby have lower fitness. However, earl y humans were able to compensate for the loss of warmth and protection provided by body hair with clothing, and no other mammal lost body hair to reduce parasit e loads. A final view is the naked love theory proposed by James Giles.[37][38] According

to this account, human hairlessness has its origin in the ancestral mother-infa nt relationship. In the naked love theory our hairlessness is ultimately the res ult of bipedalism. Because of bipedalism, ancestral infants lost the ability to grasp the mother s fur with their feet, as do other primate infants. They thus could no longer hold onto the mother themselves. Early bipedal mothers were therefore under evolutionary pressure to carry their infants. Consequently, infants survi ved only if mothers had a strong desire to hold them. Because of the pleasure of skin-to-skin contact, especially in breast-feeding, the desire to hold the infa nt would have been stronger in less hair-covered mothers who passed their hairle ssness onto their infants. These infants would have had a greater chance of surv ival than did hair-covered infants. The selection process here has been called m aternal selection. This theory explains why females and children have less body hair than do adult males; for it was in the mother-infant relationship that hair lessness was first selected for. Although sexual selection probably played a rol e later (males would have preferred hairless females who resembled their hairles s mothers), the theory is the only one that does not depend solely on sexual sel ection to explain hairlessness. It also explains why sexual selection for naked skin would have started in the first place.[