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Re: Aquatic ape theory
jamesb@hgu.mrc.ac.uk
14 Oct 1995 11:32:36 GMT
chris brochu <gator@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
:>elephants don't wear clothes >but they haven't
>>grown their hair back having returned to the land after a marine phase.
>>
>Actually, at least some of them did, like Mammuthus primogenius. Frozen
>carcasses from Siberia show that they had long, thick hair.
>
Yes, I should have been a bit clearer here. What I meant was that the
elephants in Africa didn't grow their hair back. I reckon the real answer
here is that hair only works as an insulator when dry, whereas
subcutaneous fat works both when dry or wet, so if an animal species
loses its hair and develops sub-cutaneous fat in an aquatic environment
and then returns to the land, the selective pressure to re-grow the hair
for insulation is reduced by the fat layer's presence. However, in
extremely cold conditions both are needed for insulation. Hence, the
wooly mammoth and the nude elephant. Are elephants directly descended
from wooly mammoths or are they cousins?
James Borrett.
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