Most mammals seem fine with shorter hair (usually denser though). The only other case that comes to mind of very long hair restricted to a specific body area is that of horses manes, which to be fair I’m also not totally sure what purpose it serves. Many equines seem fine with shorter manes and tails that don’t have such long hair, like zebras. They swish flies away all the same.
Some animals have long hair but it covers most of their bodies (like llamas or yaks maybe), it’s not restricted to a small area. Other animals have denser or longer hair in some areas, like lions, but this serves a purpose (protection of the neck and head) and even then the length ratio between these longer hairs and the rest of the fur isn’t as skewed as that of humans.
So, why? I get that hair on the head helps protect it from the elements and sun, but why so long? Some humans can grow hair longer than their own body length, which is remarkable, and without doing any fact check I’d say we are probably among the top 5 species with longest hairs ever. Is it just a showoff feature like a peacock’s tail feathers, an indicator of overall health? Or does it serve another function as well?
I didn’t mean to type this wall of text…, thanks for coming to my TED talk
How often were people catching on fire and not noticing that this would cause any kind of selection criteria?
People catch on fire a lot actually. I’ve caught my hair on fire dozens of times. It didn’t cover my whole head on fire because I noticed and put it out. Having long hair and cooking over a fire …. You’re occasionally going to catch on fire.
But did you notice because of the smell? Or because your head was on fire?
Smell. I noticed it before it reached my skin.
Yea in our modern society sure. But not for the last 250,000 years of human evolution.
“Having long hair and cooking over a fire” - me
Yeah I’m sure it happened alot
Does the subject’s awareness of the selection matter?
The premise here was that they noticed in time to not die… So, yes?
Ah I misread it.
I reckon it’s not so much about noticing in absolute terms (to notice vs not to notice), but rather about the smallest difference that smelly hair would make. Amplify that over millions of years and smelly hair has a good chance of being everywhere eventually.
I dunno. I’m just having trouble conceptualizing any kind of scenario that could happen with enough frequency to cause this trait to be selected for.
I think it’s more likely that the chemicals in hair just happen to smell bad when burnt. Those chemicals may have been filtered for other reasons.
Yea that could also very well be, that it was pre-existing and had no impact during evolution. I could see there being an evolutionary advantage to hair smelling bad. That’s as far as my confidence and knowledge reaches on the matter. Very interesting nonetheless! :)