As for pubic and armpit hair, Rasasi says this is the so-called spandrel – may be a byproduct of the evolution of another trait – or may be leftovers from primate ancestors who used pheromones to communicate with each other ( Today there is no evidence of humans using pheromones).
Whatever caused the loss of human fur, one thing is very likely. Consistent with early humans acquiring darker skin pigmentation Where body hair used to be needed UV protection.
“It’s a logical reasoning we can do,” Rasasi says. “It’s possible that some humans were just born with completely hairless bodies and then became an adaptation in tandem with some of those humans evolving to darker skin. There may have been a slight, gradual decrease in skin pigmentation, caused by a small, gradual increase in skin pigmentation.”
It’s interesting to think about how fur was lost, but it may seem irrelevant to our lives today. It has been shown that chemotherapy, or the disorders that cause hair loss, can even affect people with unwanted hair loss today.
In early 2023, geneticists Nathan Clarke at the University of Utah and colleagues Amanda Kowalczyk and Maria Chikina at the University of Pittsburgh surveyed the genes of 62 mammals, including humans, to determine which genetic alterations hairless mammals shared with each other. I found Excludes their furry cousins. They found that humans appear to have the genes for a full coat of body hair, but now our genomic regulation has stopped them from being expressed.
They also grow when the seed loses its hair. they do it by repeatedly changing the same set of genesand discovered several new genes involved in this process.
“Some of them [new] We haven’t done much genetic screening for the presence or absence of hair in the past, so the genes weren’t characterized at all,” Clark says.[They] It seems like a master controller that could be manipulated in the future if people want to stimulate hair growth.
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