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Re: Why is Homo sapiens hairless?
Barry Mennen (barrym2@ix.netcom.com(Barry)
8 Nov 1996 14:08:55 GMT
In <01bbcd33$848426e0$3a2270c2@default> "John Waters"
<jdwaters@dircon.co.uk> writes:
>
>
>
>Barry Mennen <barrym2@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
><55lpvv$2qt@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>...
>> In <01bbc9e8$5f6571a0$f42270c2@default> "John Waters"
>> <jdwaters@dircon.co.uk> writes:
>> >
>> >JW: Come on Barry. Dish the dirt. Let us hear your
>> >hypothesis.
>> >
>> >John.
>> >
>> Well John, it's hardly mine, but here goes:
>>
>> As Darwin said, it is "ornamentation;" but ornamentation
>> to attract the male; my guess is that the first parts of
>the
>> female hominid to lose hair would have been the buttocks,
>>chest and face--since there is no real heat season for
>humans,
>
>JW: There is no real _heat_ season for any specie of mammal
>in
>equatorial conditions. So what made the hominids special?
>
>>I am making an *assumption* that this
>> ability for continual sexual receptivity in the female
>set
>>our emerging line apart--to that end, the engine of sexual
>>selection worked on the libidinous males to mate with the
>>females that offered the most in the way of visual cues.
>
>JW: Sexual cues tend to vary according to the habitat and
>mating
>system. In this context, ape species with polygamic mating
>systems
>are virtually devoid of visual cues. The dimorphism of
>early hominid
>fossils implies that they had a polygamic mating system.
>How
>does that square with the Darwin-Mennen theory, Barry?
>>
>> Protuberant breast and buttocks would have followed;
>>after all, if we as a species were able to develop a brain
>>good enough to solve quadratic equations in a few million
>>years, why couldn't we lose hair for sex in a flash?
>
>JW: Does it really take a few million years to solve
>quadratic
>equations? No wonder I failed at maths.
>
>John.
John--
Better to fail at math than sex.
Cheers
Barry
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