Why do humans have much less body hair than most mammals?
Show answer & explanation
Answer: Better sweat cooling
Better sweat cooling ✓ — Correct! One leading explanation is that less body hair let sweat evaporate more efficiently, helping early humans stay cooler during long activity in hot environments.
Better camouflage — Wrong. Camouflage matters for some animals, but it does not explain why humans evolved powerful sweating together with reduced body hair.
Faster muscle growth — Wrong. Muscle growth is not the main trade-off here. The bigger evolutionary clue is heat control.
More History & Culture questions
- Why do 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. still feel confusing in a system that otherwise seems familiar?
- What does the French Revolution’s decimal time experiment reveal about changing time systems?
- What made equal-length hours move from specialist astronomy into ordinary daily life?
- Why did Mesopotamian base-60 counting fit naturally with later minutes and seconds?
- Why could an early Egyptian daylight hour be longer in summer than in winter?
- If sunlight could be tracked by shadows, how did ancient Egyptian timekeeping make night fit the same 12-part pattern?