Art Man

It seems pretty self explanatory to me. Imagine a four legged animal with a brain the size of a human brain.

Well that doesn't contribute much as a response. Wink.

I just got the notion that the answer is simply that as apes brains grew there was a higher need to protect those brains from low lying hazards.

What does fur offer animals? Climate/temperature would seem to play a factor but isn't true accross the animal kingdom. For example, all bears have fur. A polar bears' fur is adapted for colder icy climate. Mountain bears are found all over the world and far enough south where the climate is hot to determine that they keep their fur not merely for the warmth. Fur protects against small damages such as scratches and accumulates dirt, keeping mud from sticking close to the skin. Fur also provides camouflage and in some species changes color season to season. In the chance of a lesion the hair can stick inside the wound increasing blood coagulation and strengthening the scab. I see the coat of fur more as a protectant against small skin injuries and infections such as staff. Ticks and lice love fur so theres some drawback. In early humans fur must have provided them the same advantages but as they became more intelligent they were able to avoid certain hardships that other animals arent mentally prepared to discern and parry. So look at a simple task such as running through a wooded thicket. If a deer runs through the thicket they may do so at several times the speed of a human and crash through bushes and snap low branches of trees. A deer has no arms so he cannot move stuff out of the way. When a human walks upright her hands are free to move branches out of the way and she is free to vertically navigate obstacles and not stomp through the thicket with minimal attention. I apologize that I took this off subject, the point about fur loss seems closely related to walking upright.

Could be our nervous systems function more efficiently without fur. Also, your skin is more sensitive to the touch on parts of your body that are hairless in contrast with the harrier parts because the hair follicles decentralize and soften the pressure when contacted. A hallmark of higher intelligence is attention to detail and deeper sensitivities. The more sensitive they were physically to detail the more apt they were to be observant and able to process information, heightening their chance of intelligence gain. Look at earths most intelligent mammals. Elephants and dolphins and whales are at the top of that list and all of them are hairless for the most part. There's plenty of hairy animals in that hot climate, so, temperature isn't likely a factor, or else Paleolithic Europeans would have gained fur for warmth. Mediterranean humans are generally hairrier than Northern Europeans. Maybe its the wind that fur is most concerned with.

That's an interesting thought, item for item, in what order did each mutation occur in human physical morphology and what changes were the catalyst for new changes? Suppose that lack of fur inspired early humans to make clothing. Then you could ponder what inspired the chromosomes to remove fur? Was it a spark of intelligence in the human brain that pushed the mutation subconsciously? Like, the ape didn't consciously think, hey I think I will lose my fur, the early human brain put two and two together and said well, this ape could do so much more but he needs some motivation. So, the mutation happens and one day an ape was born naked and right away he was like man I need to cover up because man its chilly. The loss of fur was likely a gradual process anyways. Have you ever wore a sweat band or a beanie down to your eyebrows? Imagine a permanent sweat band you could never remove. That would make you irate after a while. And thats essentially what having fur on your face is like.

Life's main objective is to spread, avoid extinction and evolve into higher forms.

I don't have anything ultimately grand to talk about in the sciences like a P.H.D. but I love science as it has always been a prime interest of mine and perhaps in a perfect world I would've become a scientist. I thought perhaps since my life is only half over I got enough time to get a proper degree for a high paying job in a scientific market, specifically I was thinking "Pharmacist" but I won't make a definite decision on that for another 5 years, depending on how my life works out till then. No chance to become a world famous physicist or anything like that, a bit too late, but science it will be my final profession. I always followed science all the way back before my other interests and I consider my first scientific experiment to be when I was about 9 or 10 years old. Before then I had a problem with sticking foreign objects into power sockets, knocking out the power to the house several times and getting knocked out once when I stuck a dinner fork in there. I woke up in my mothers arms and my younger sister standing over me, both crying because they thought I was going to die. Burnt the carpet and my shirt that time. I was eventually trained to stop sticking objects in light sockets and was given countless stacks of National Geographics and this animal card box set made in the 1970s that my father had collected when he was a kid filled with hundreds of photo cards with tons of information on them about each animal. Eventually when I was old enough to leave the house alone I started going to the library and checked out a few hundred science books and paranormal books and anything on Mars, which was my biggest interest then. I remember being fascinated with this book about the crystal skulls and this other book written by Von Daniken. I remained skeptical though and didn't accept fringe science like true science but read all there was at the library on both sides of that fence anyway. My grandmother was a retired librarian so books were sort of always there and second nature. Nowadays you rarely ever see people reading books. I got hooked on my aunts science magazine subscription to the point she would hide them till she was finished with them because I would read them for hours and wrinkle up the pages. There were a couple awesome publications that were discontinued, I cant remember what they were called. But NOVA was one of my favorites. These days I read a lot of science articles on the internet and follow casually but not really with specialized interest except for neuroscience which I consider sort of a hobby to learn. I don't know my IQ and I don't have a college education but like my grandfather told me "there's a difference between education and intelligence". I noticed this board is filled with real scientists and not deluded UFO hunters so thats why I joined.