Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told
Speaker 1: you from house Stop works dot com. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen Kristin.
Speaker 1: Here's a question for you. All right, how about you
Speaker 1: tell us all the top three traits you look for animate? Okay, um,
Speaker 1: I guess they're pretty typical. Uh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Molly did not prep me for this question, so that's
Speaker 1: the question it might be taking. This is just off
Speaker 1: the top of my head. I gotta say. Physically, I
Speaker 1: like a strong jawline, okay, I do. And a sense
Speaker 1: of humor. It's good. Okay, someone to make me laugh, gotcha,
Speaker 1: So so I'll stop crying. And Third, oh god, I
Speaker 1: don't know tall. I'm a pretty tall person, and I
Speaker 1: would like for my mate to be taller than I
Speaker 1: am when I am wearing heels once a year. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty reasonable list. Yeah, it sounds pretty superficial. But
Speaker 1: that's off the top of my head. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I look for? What, Molly, someone who's free of parasites.
Speaker 1: That's wise of you, I think, so. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 1: when you go in for the first kiss, you don't
Speaker 1: want to parasite to jump on. I know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to ruin the moment exactly. The reason I have
Speaker 1: parasites on my mind is there's this new show on
Speaker 1: and all Planet Monsters inside me. It's all about parasites.
Speaker 1: It's about how they get in us, get on us.
Speaker 1: And it just got me thinking that I will love
Speaker 1: a parasite free lifestyle and I want my mate to
Speaker 1: do the same as well. But did you know that
Speaker 1: parasites maybe the reason why we don't have body hair? Well, yes, Molly,
Speaker 1: I do. It's one of the newest theories I believe
Speaker 1: in this whole question of why humans are so hairless.
Speaker 1: We might not think of ourselves as being hairless when
Speaker 1: we have to shave our legs and shave our beards
Speaker 1: and etcetera, etcetera. But compared to other mammals, we are
Speaker 1: quite bare. Yes, very few mammals have his little hairs
Speaker 1: us and the ones that do are mainly aquatic creatures
Speaker 1: like a hippopotamus. They go into the water, so you know,
Speaker 1: they don't need to be having hair. It's not very
Speaker 1: good for swimming, right, and you've got elephants who are
Speaker 1: also pretty hairless, and they're big floppy ears help cool
Speaker 1: them off as well. Yeah, they live in hot climates. Now,
Speaker 1: both of those reasons water and temperature relate to sort
Speaker 1: of the predominant theories as to why we're hairless, because
Speaker 1: basically before this parasite theory came along, there were two
Speaker 1: other schools of thigh as to why humans don't have hair.
Speaker 1: One was that and this is my favorite phrase of
Speaker 1: the week. One was is that we were at one
Speaker 1: time water dwelling apes, like early humans might have been
Speaker 1: sort of semi aquatic, and so when we were semi
Speaker 1: aquatic water dwelling apes, we lost the body hair. It
Speaker 1: would need to need the fur to insulate us because
Speaker 1: we were in the water could cool off. Is that
Speaker 1: is that? What? Well, it's just just bad for swimming. Ah,
Speaker 1: it holds you back. It's like when swimmers shaved their
Speaker 1: legs and in exchange for getting rid of the fur,
Speaker 1: if we were what was your favorite phrase water dwelling,
Speaker 1: water dwellings. So, Kristen, you water dwelling apes. That's how
Speaker 1: I would use it. That's the context. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for putting that in context. Um, But I think
Speaker 1: according to that theory, since we lost the fur, we
Speaker 1: got body fat instead to help inslid us in to
Speaker 1: make us more buoyant. The other theory goes along with
Speaker 1: what you're talking about with elephants, and that if you
Speaker 1: live in a hot temperature, you don't need all this
Speaker 1: hair like heating me up right, if I am going
Speaker 1: on a trip to the beach, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: pack my your fury suit my first suit. Are we
Speaker 1: gonna leave it at home? So the first suit. So
Speaker 1: the theory is is that if we lived on the
Speaker 1: African savannah, as it's believed the early humans did, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have need that needed that much hair. And additionally,
Speaker 1: when we started walking upright, our backs weren't exposed to
Speaker 1: the hot sun, so we didn't need as much protection
Speaker 1: from the sun. Right, And I think that all of
Speaker 1: this is pointing to a little little word called thermoregulation.
Speaker 1: Our ability too, as warm blooded animals to regulate our
Speaker 1: own body temperature internally maintained at nine eight point six
Speaker 1: degrees inside. Sweating also helps with that. Sweating and cooling.
Speaker 1: So those are sort of the two main theories you
Speaker 1: might have learned in school as to why humans didn't
Speaker 1: have as much body hair. But then in two thousand three, Kristen,
Speaker 1: we had some guys come along to blow our minds. Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe you're referring to a doctor Mark Pagel and
Speaker 1: his colleague Walter Bottomer, thank you. They published a paper
Speaker 1: in the Proceedings of Royal Society in two thousand three
Speaker 1: positing that as humans evolved, we had all this, you know,
Speaker 1: we had our fur, our fury suits, our furry suits,
Speaker 1: um like other primates, and since parasites thrive more in
Speaker 1: in the fur, in the furry environment, we gradually shed
Speaker 1: our fur in order to lose the parasites, get rid
Speaker 1: of all those parasites and the more importantly, the diseases
Speaker 1: that they carry along with them. Yeah, because traditionally, you know,
Speaker 1: species die out because parasites give them disease. And when
Speaker 1: you think about how the plague spread with like these
Speaker 1: little fleas, possibly, you know, you don't really want to
Speaker 1: be carrying around a magnet for for little bugs, right,
Speaker 1: And they were saying that around the same time that
Speaker 1: humans started living in shelters and started wearing clothes, uh,
Speaker 1: that corresponded with with this whole furlessness evolution. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: clothes helped because while you know, a parasite can get
Speaker 1: on like a shirt, you can change your shirt and
Speaker 1: you can wash it. You can get rid of the parasites,
Speaker 1: whereas if it's in your fur, that's just it's just
Speaker 1: bad new spears. Right. And according to this parasite theory,
Speaker 1: as humans eventually lost their fur, it became a part
Speaker 1: of the entire like sexual selection. Uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: people who were the least harry were more attractive because
Speaker 1: they seemed healthier because they wouldn't have had as many parasites,
Speaker 1: so you would be more inclined to want to mate
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, you can get all up close because
Speaker 1: they don't have any things and there no nits, no
Speaker 1: nitnits to pick out. And this might also explain why
Speaker 1: women are generally less hairy than men, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: in our species, males can be choosier basically, and so
Speaker 1: they when they started picking these females that didn't have
Speaker 1: as much body hair than hairlessness became a more attractive trait. Right,
Speaker 1: And hairlessness is also related to our body hair is
Speaker 1: related to testosterone, which is a predominantly male hormone. So
Speaker 1: for men, a little bit more body hair might be
Speaker 1: a sign of virility, and for women, the more beer
Speaker 1: you are might be more inherent sign of femininity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they think that this parasite there, it kind
Speaker 1: of explains why women have less body hair overall. But
Speaker 1: they also cover something that previous the areas of UH
Speaker 1: hairlessness didn't cover, and that was the pubic hair. Okay,
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite hair. I guess well, we've got We did
Speaker 1: evolve to be bare except for three main areas, obviously,
Speaker 1: the pubic hair as as you mentioned, and our under
Speaker 1: arms in our head. So the parasite theory explains pubic
Speaker 1: hair in away with the other two theories don't. Because
Speaker 1: the thinking is is that pubic hair still serves UH
Speaker 1: purpose in sexual attraction. That there's a high concentration of
Speaker 1: sweat glands down there, and so when we sweat, it
Speaker 1: gets sort of caught in the hairs, and this sort
Speaker 1: of helps us release and hold these pheromones that are
Speaker 1: attractive to potential mates. Right, And the same thing goes
Speaker 1: for the underarm hair, the high concentration of sweat glands.
Speaker 1: As anyone who has been incredibly nervous before meeting or
Speaker 1: stuck outside on a hot day, knows you know, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the under arm pit stains, which you're really pleasant,
Speaker 1: but like the like the pubic hair, that's also the
Speaker 1: underarm hair down there could also be a uh wafting
Speaker 1: pheromone machine to also attract mates, although I don't know
Speaker 1: if my bio on a hot day is is you know,
Speaker 1: come on? But but the thing about it is that
Speaker 1: we've probably been trained by society to think that it's not.
Speaker 1: You know, there are plenty of cultures where you don't
Speaker 1: shave your under arm hair and they still get together
Speaker 1: just fine. So why are we so obsessed with this
Speaker 1: hairlessness when you know nature has given us hair in
Speaker 1: certain places. Right, there was an article that came out
Speaker 1: in The Economist about this whole human evolution towards being
Speaker 1: more bare, And it's talking about this whole phenomenon of
Speaker 1: women waxing their whole bodies and men too, waxing and
Speaker 1: shaving and de pilatory dreams and all the things that
Speaker 1: we do might just be this ingrained, like evolutionary urge
Speaker 1: to be as bare as possible. Yeah, and it might
Speaker 1: all go back to the parasites. So let's go back
Speaker 1: to this original question that we had of what do
Speaker 1: parasites and razor burn have in common? We know now
Speaker 1: that according to this parasite fear, that they may be
Speaker 1: the cause for us losing our quote unquote for you know,
Speaker 1: and also the inner drive for us keeping ourselves shaven
Speaker 1: is to look healthy to potential mates. But let's go
Speaker 1: into this razor burn thing, because you brought up a
Speaker 1: good point about other cultures, for instance, not shaving their
Speaker 1: under arms, and how we might be more trained by
Speaker 1: society to shave. Yeah. I was looking at, um, the
Speaker 1: history of shaving, and it's pretty fascinating. From the beginning
Speaker 1: of time, you know, even though we lost the for
Speaker 1: people were still kind of obsessed with taking the rest
Speaker 1: of the hair they had off. In four thousand BC,
Speaker 1: women were making these sort of homemade creams to get
Speaker 1: their hair off, and they would have ingredients like arsenic
Speaker 1: So that's not good, um, but it's just kind of
Speaker 1: developed through time, Like I know, for men, Alexander the
Speaker 1: Great was a very uh, very big pioneer and being
Speaker 1: completely shaven because he hated to go into battle with
Speaker 1: any facial hair at all. Um. And then what the
Speaker 1: underarm thing? Is really sort of a US phenomenon that
Speaker 1: happened during World War One when a shaving company put
Speaker 1: an ad in a woman's magazine. It had a woman wearing,
Speaker 1: you know, a sleeveless dress and she had her arms
Speaker 1: up and you could see her bare under arms. And
Speaker 1: the whole campaign was designed to teach women under arm
Speaker 1: hair was unhygienic and that it was unfeminine, and as
Speaker 1: a result, Razor sales went through the roof. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's much like we were discussing with diamonds and our
Speaker 1: Diamonds podcast is basically, women have been trained by marketing
Speaker 1: executives to think that something is either good or bad,
Speaker 1: in this case, that under arm hair is bad. And um,
Speaker 1: speaking of all of this shaving, um, you know, women
Speaker 1: complain a lot about having, you know, if they shave
Speaker 1: their legs, Like men don't know what we have to
Speaker 1: go through. We're shaving like half of our bodies. But
Speaker 1: one interesting thing that I've found out about shaving is
Speaker 1: that men actually might have it worse than women because,
Speaker 1: according to this article in the Economists, even though the
Speaker 1: legs and the under arms are about nine times more
Speaker 1: surface area than men's facial areas. There's actually just as
Speaker 1: many hair follicles in in both the facial area and
Speaker 1: the legs and arms, and they're denser. The men's facial
Speaker 1: hair is denser and grows faster, So while we may
Speaker 1: have more territory to cover, they have just as much
Speaker 1: hair to get rid of. Wow. Yeah, that's a good factoid.
Speaker 1: And um men's spend I think it is thirty three
Speaker 1: days of their life just shaving their beards. Wow. On average.
Speaker 1: Think about that the next time you shave. But I
Speaker 1: do have one thing to share, is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it might be a little bit more culturally acceptable for
Speaker 1: a guy to walk around with a beard. As we
Speaker 1: were saying, hair of all types can play a role
Speaker 1: in sexual attraction. Beards and mustaches definitely do it for
Speaker 1: some ladies. But have you ever seen a guy shave
Speaker 1: with sand paper? Not that I know of, No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I that's sort of a dumb way to ask the question.
Speaker 1: But did you know that a World War two and
Speaker 1: there was no metal left because they sent it off
Speaker 1: to the war, women shave their legs with sandpaper? Oh man,
Speaker 1: we just buffed our buffed our hair down. Well, that's
Speaker 1: obsess we are with being hairless. Thanks parasites, Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you parasites and ticks. But you know I'm clean,
Speaker 1: sandpaper or for take your pick. I guess I'm I
Speaker 1: guess I'm good with where I am. Yeah, fur less
Speaker 1: like a rhino or molly. To throw it back to
Speaker 1: your phrase of the week, hairless like a water dwelling ape. Nice, Kristen,
Speaker 1: that one was for you. I appreciate it. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: if water drawing ape doesn't float your boat, maybe learning
Speaker 1: more about parasites and razor burn one. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you want to get really grossed out about parasites, don't
Speaker 1: forget to check out Monsters Inside Me on Animal Planet
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays at nine o'clock pm Eastern and Pacific. And
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about parasites, Chris and
Speaker 1: I have both been wrying about them on our blog
Speaker 1: how to Stuff. So if thank you have any parasite
Speaker 1: knowledge anec does to share, head on over there and
Speaker 1: leave us your comments at how to stuff on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, is it how staff works dot com.
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