Why Do We Have Hair In Such Random Places? - Nina G. Jablonski

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Orange: "Thicker longer hair protects our sensitive scalps and keeps our brains from overheating" Bald people: Why are we still here? Just to suffer

Aditya Sista: "I'm here to protect your eyes from debris" - the eyelash that is skiing on my eyeball.

King David: Basically, long story short: We don't know.

ASMR i guess: Only one thing: the oil and fluid produced by sweat glands isn't smelly by itself; it's the bacteria that eats it that produces the smell! It's a twist of fate that this video showed up on the day of my Anatomy test on the Integumentary System

sami khodir: "underdressed" Honest to god I have so much hair on my body I'd pretty much qualify as a monke.

Amanda B: I always thought hair was also a protective measure against insects. If one crawls across your bodily hairs, you feel it faster than on bare skin. So extrmeties like fingers & toes have hair too

wilky Wilky: I think eyebrows also help to keep debris out of our eyes, because I once had my eyebrows trimmed and I noticed I was getting more dust in my eyes than I normally do, so I don’t have them trimmed now and I get less dust in my eyes, so perhaps they are to protect our eyes as well as communication

Matt Blake: "We keep facial hair for identity purposes." Makes sense, I wanted to keep my beard so I told my body to keep producing it and my body's DNA said, "Yes, Master." If future generations ever ask when and how their ancestors lost brain cells, I hope someone points them to this video.

Iron mat: “Disperse our sweat smell more effectively for recognition” Me: Yes well it doesn't seem like the good type of recognition

Envinyatar: TED-Ed: - Why don't we have fur? Mediterranean and Middle Eastern men: - We don't? Really?

James G: Doesn't keeping warm have something to do with this also? I grow a beard with ease and it genuinely insulates my face against the cold (to a certain extent). Take a cold winter's day in the UK, if I am clean shaven, a cold day's breeze can hit my face and I feel it strongly, but if I have quite a full beard going on, it definitely lessens the impact of the cold on my skin.

Ian Roger Burton: Congratulations ! Extremely well put-together video. Music, animation and narration all perfectly balanced !

Banumm McFarmerBoi: Imagine being jealous of a monkey because it's flaunting it's fur at you.

Phong Quach: Thanks for putting this together! I however dont find the scientific hypothesis convincing :(. Particularly losing hair due to temperature regulation.

Amateur Professional: Technically we do have fur. It's called vellus hair and we have it all over our bodies. Sometimes you can't even see it but it's generally those very short, thin, light-colored hairs. The thick hairs that are more noticeable on our bodies are called terminal hairs. So we're not really hairless, the more accurate question is why do we have so few terminal hairs on our body compared to vellus hairs.

Anshuman Abhishek: The real question should be, "why we don't have hair anymore?" Now we are literally questioning from where we started

Joe Cortez: "Keeping our heads cool" while the rest of our bodies bake... and other mammals like lions, hyenas and gazelle remain furry... under the same hot sun... makes perfect sense.

Just A Channel Without A Name: I feel like every time i watched a ted ed video I increased 10 brain cell

Noodles Dorkenson: Also, I think I heard somewhere that the smells that people tend to find most attractive from other people are from the types of people that would produce more advanced offspring with them. But if you’re interested in that, look it up

Twinsen: Curious that the video skipped mentioning that eyebrows prevent sweat from falling into our own eyes too.

Jesse Johnson: Great explanations and even greater animation! Thanks!

Making the Case: I was just reading research by Jablonski on race and how skin colour evolved into our various shades to protect folate levels and absorb more Vitamin D depending on where in the world we lived.

self-proclaimed nimwit: My dad overhead this and asked why his arm hair's so lusterous, but his scalp is smoother than a spoon?

I'm Batman: Oh it is such an interesting question. After watching this video, I finally realize that hair serves a useful fuction as a protection for our body.

Olia Shylo: Beautiful animation! Thank you!

Otacon55: Love the art and animation!❤

Celeste E: When and how humans lost their coats?? Humans were never fully covered in hair. That part genuinely confused me

mrmonkeyman79: TED Ex: Let's do a video about the science of human head and body hair Animator: I'm just going to pretend that women don't have body hair

Amelia Warfield: I'm impressed with this informative video about hair!

John Smith: Great summary. But I must make a correction on an important aspect. The unpleasant "body odors" are not the result of smelly humans that just so happen to stink in only a couple of areas. And some of us don't "stink" more than others simply because of individual secretions. Pheromones are indeed created uniquely, person to person, and are in ways like a fingerprint, but our sweat gland secretions only stink when external bacteria feed on them, giving off their own effulgence (stank) as a byproduct. So a person who is well-groomed and regularly washed does not give off radiant, identifiable nastiness. This only occurs if colonies of bacteria are allowed to grow to pungent levels. A temporary situation for sure. Again, this is an important distinction. Keep the bacteria to a minimum, and you can sweat all you want without frightening small children and, well, everyone else. Fall behind on your hygiene and anti-bacterial methods, and even a light dusting will send your closest mates running for the hills...

dav ep: The initial reasons of loss of body fur seems like it would apply to many other mammals with "active life styles." It's even shown in the one section with the lion chasing the human.

Wayne Jones: Good video, but if having less body hair is advantageous for keeping cool then why aren't other physically active animals less furry?

Rolf Kongen Vik: I have heard an expert in Medical Anthropology who say's that those with more body hair than others evolved in a mosquito infested location. The hair discourages those insects. As far as the curly hair on the head cooling down oneself, wouldn't that also apply to body hair. The curly hair gives added surface area to reduce heat. Much like you see in electrical components where a finned surface increase the discharge of heat better. Another very significant factor is the temperature and humidity. In a humid climate sweat doesn't evaporate as efficiently as in a drier climate. This poses risk of Heat Stroke since the body cannot cool down in humid climates.

ChirpyMisha: 3:41 Yesterday I shaved my legs for the first time in my life. After shaving I took a shower, and I noticed how I almost couldn't feel the water on my legs. It's probably because I shaved the vellus hairs off. My socks and pants also don't irritate me anymore My legs are a bit more prickly now which isn't so nice, so I still need to find something against that

AceAperture: I love how we are literally bald apes and somehow we took over the world

Alec Xander: "[...] Several studies have shown that people are able to identify their own armpit odors as well as those people they're close with." What kind of person does the scientist took testimony from?

Jason Ratliff: I thought the reason for eyebrows was more for redirecting sweat from your eyes than expressing emotion. It was important to be able to run down our prey and maintain accuracy with our stones and eventually (obviously) spears.

mark dasihit: So we shed off our fur to allow the sweat, from our growing number of sweat glands, to evaporate during the hot day to cool off. That is assuming we already know how to keep warm at night when the sun is down, or during cold seasons when the last thing we need is to keep cool. The "sweat gland" hypothesis doesn't seem plausible to me

Pao K.: I like the answer "we don't know", at least better than circling around the answer without really saying anything like most science videos

James G: This video just raised more questions for me than answered tbh. Am I the only one not overly impressed with this?

Marton Dinnyes: Eyebrows are also important to drive sweat around your eyes so it doesn't get into your eyes. Very useful.

Daniel López García: 1:23 "Early hominids first transitioned out of trees and adopted a more active lifestyle. Keeping cool became increasingly important." I don't buy this argument by itself. Most if not all mammals living in Africa keep their fur so there has to be something more. I hope we one day have an actual explanation and not a working theory, but hey its a good question to keep trying to answer!

Jayachandran Thampi: It would have been helpful to study change in posture (4 legs to 2), related changes in Voluntary / Cortex development & immunity, dietary change (Agriculture related physiological changes - cultivated seeds than natural / limited exposure to sun etc). Importantly, psychological changes from Society formation & safety - less dependency on natural safety measures as in hair as a sense organ of psyche / mind.

Neil Revin: Since I was a child it was hard for me to accept so much hair on my body, but now I’m okay with it.

Connor Hudston: Wouldn’t facial hair in men (beards) serve the same purpose as a lions main, to protect the neck? Not in the event of hunt or fighting other species but in the event of fighting our own species when we stand face to face and punch the daylights out of each other. Just a thought

Stephen Jackson: Your (incorrect) drawings of chimps with furless hands show you missed the biggest reason. Chimps have furry hands. Humans don't. Losing fur likely occurred all over the place, but allowed those who lost it to evolve more hand and finger dexterity -- a very advantageous thing. So it stayed, even if the hand was the only really important part. And the head hair to protect against the sun is flat wrong since men spent/spend way more time in the sun than women.

Muhammad Niyaz: This is all very hypothetical. Not watching this vid could have given me the same amount of knowledge than watching it, which is there are so many things that are just a mystery for us.

Justin Stamper: I want to add another idea to why we might have lost our body hair. What if the earliest humans evolved in an area where they spent half of their time on land and half in the water. A few human quirks to think about. Our noses flare but also contract. Our shape is a perfect balance of runner AND swimmer. Lastly....water babies seem hard to explain if we evolved on the plains.

Sasquatch: Who ever animated this deserves a raise

Every Day: 2:39 *My small single eyelash hair falling into my eye* Me : "you became the very thing that you swore to destroy" Edit : oh shoot, I lost my heart because I edited the eyebrow to eyelash ... :/

Utterly Awesome: It is actually thought by some researchers that beards add cushion to protect men’s jaw bones from breaking due to a punch in a fight.

Jesse West: Whoever drew the baby for the "gentle touches" part obviously doesn't have kids

Topa Sunday: 3:20 "Recognise that of people they are close with" Growing up, I was really close to my mum (my best friend). When she wasn't around (still alive) I'll always lay on her used clothes. At the time it made me miss her less. She died some 20 years ago

Heidi Bird Music: So, what about the body hair that covers the majority of the surface and rises into goosebumps when it's cold?

Anna Busic: I love how TedED always somehow makes videos about things I wonder about..

litfuse293 plus: 2:10 that actually makes a looot of sense. whenever i'm out on a hot day, i'd touch the top of my hair and it'd be very warm, teetering on hot, yet my scalp would feel significantly cooler.

Toothless: when eyelashes are supposed to protect your eye but end up falling in it “you’ve become the very thing you swore to destroy!”

Yuna_nanda: Am I the only one bothered that the “Eve” in the Thumbnail doesn’t have any body hair? Cool video though.

boom91602able: The more I learn. The more I realize how much we get things rubbed in our faces

akash dubey: "But we really don't know " - Every historic science study ever

Vadim: "We do not know why humans have brows" - Correction: You do no know. But we know that brows protect eyes from sweat running down the forehead.

Rafael Cárdenas: It would have been nice to talk about the mechanisms behind, with HOX genes ; ) Cool in any case.

ahmed yaaqoub: I think eyebrows may have another utility, which is protecting eyes from sweat coming down from forehead!

2Boys You2be: As a furry, I cried watching this.

Morganesensort: A scientific and biological video about hair Still represents the female hairless

Max Truchseß: People severely underestimate the ability to sweat and the persistence-hunting lifestyles humans evolved for. Just so much about is just screams STAMINA. We can keep cool while running by sweating which means we don‘t have to abandon prey that‘s able to outrun us like for example great cats do (cheetahs, lions, etc.), our bipedal design makes us much more energy efficient while running due to activating less muscles, and our calves and feet are designed in such a way that we exert MUCH less energy while running compared to the springload type designs needed to achieve high speeds. Combine that with our stellar social skills and it‘s no wonder humans rose atop the food chain, we are basically PERFECT pack hunting, stalking, persistence hunters. And those are rare, the only other example that I can think of is the bluefin tuna and that is also an apex predator. Not to mention we can, like, throw things like spears, cook food, break bones for marrow without needing ridiculously strong jaws etc.

Me Off: Fur plus wet equals death. We traded hair for sweat. At some point a furless subhuman was born and it's ability to sweat won the day. It could fight for longer. It could run for longer.

Official: Do other animals who run or exercise just as much as humans lose hair ?

Eleonore Carta: Simply, we put all our evolution points into maxing out intelligence that we had none left for things like fur, claws, beaks & so on

Meet the Artist: So I was at the salon the other day. I always am trying out different experimentation so this time, I decided to narrow down my thick eyebrows into really sleek lines and curvy from edges. Just like many of you must be thinking that it's a "women's rights" to have sleek/thin eyebrows, the hair dresser also reminded me of that by saying "sir, it will look like a lady's (eyebrows)". Meanwhile, just a few days back... Boom! I discovered a girl in my old acquaintance list that she has thick eyebrows as similar as mine. Or probably due to the lockdown, she must not be getting anything done and her eyebrows grew dense. I'm not judging her at all. IMO she looked just fine. Just indicating that women do have thicker eyebrows but everything is so culturally diversified and have created so cheap stereotypical and sexist distinction, that we can't be ourselves (i.e. women can't have excessive hairs) and we can't try different looks/experiments (like the one I mentioned above). You'll be reminded that you're a guy or a girl, so do what from years have been going on made as a rule by don't know who. There should be an educational video to explain this societal norm and reason for distinction or no distinction.

Walter B.: What I do know is: I got no hair where I want it and I got hair where I don’t want it. Lately I got hair growing where I thought it was impossible.

Justin Hackstadt: When I became less active later in my life my back hair went ballistic, if you know what I mean. I think it's because I don't exercise and sweat like I used to as a teen. It is consistent with this theory.

Eric_Lee00: We have hair in certain places because of evolution when you go back and see it you'll learn about the dust mites and how radiation actually had something to do with the evolution of the human civilization but there's more to it as well

maricar plana: thank you Ted-Ed so much for making this channel and videos I got it really easily not like the other YouTube videos

Krissy M: Or as Dr.Stone puts it, we are “shiny monkeys”

The Krucifix: I want to see a TED-Ed on why the world is so prudish about the exposure of the human body.

Werewolf Wu: Fun fact: We werewolves have special muscles inside our follicles that enable us to extend and retract our hair at will, thanks to a 16-basepair-mutation on gene LCT-W982 on chromosome pair #8.

Mike Sorensen: I read that through our evolution, we were aquatic at one point and lost our hair like water mammals

Thats So Sahi: I am currently learning more on the internet than my whole 12 years of school life. Fascinating ✨

Frank B: Also my arm and leg hair allow me to feel something before it touches (and possibly damages) my skin. Which could be advantages in certain scenarios.

Kyle Sanford: Brilliant video. Thank you.

Alister222222: I would almost guarantee that facial hair developed as protection. One study I saw mentioned somewhere showed thick beards absorb about 30% of the impact from a blow to the jaw, such as from fighting. Walking upright, our throats are completely exposed, and a thick beard would provide significant protection to the most vulnerable part of our bodies. A wolf would get a mouthful of hair instead of our windpipe or jugular vein. In this way, a beard can be considered similar to a lion's mane, which provides protection when fighting and hunting.

Gerald Montagna: The answer is simple: for swimming. The human body has over 100 modifications specifically for swimming. People have never refuted the "aquatic ape" theory, it has just been ignored.

Jon Bilgutay: The hair on our arms and legs also (in my experience) play a part in protecting us from parasites. The hair on my limbs have alerted me of ticks before they got the chance to bite me.

clabpr79: The answer is simple, by design. DNA is a programming language. Our intelligence does not compare to the functioning of our body from the simplest to the most complex.

JohannBaritono: There's a misconception of evolution, I would say. Before saying that we don't have hair "because it makes cooling easier", we have to demonstrate that early furred humans died because of "lack of proper cooling". Sometimes I feel that people confuse Darwin's evolution with Lamarck's ideas, like the giraffe that made its neck longer, or Aristotle's "final cause" which states that things are there for a reason, like we have ears to hear. A professor of mine used to joke with that. He used to say that "our ears and nose are there to hold our glasses, because that's the way we use it now".

Harijot Khalsa: Wait, so hair helps secretions in the armpits but impedes the secretion of sweating everywhere else on the body?

Roxynano: I thought we had closer roots to the ocean because of the lack of fur/hair. I mean why are we the only creature on land without any real fur? Well the more we know!

radish: "Thicker longer hair protects our sensitive scalps and keeps our brains from overheating" Bald people: Why are we still here? Just to suffer

Marius Gregor Sarauw-Nielsen: If the hair on our head is protecting the brain then what about those who are bald? ps, keep up the good work:)

Višnja Musa: I much more like hypothesis that our ancestors started swimming (hunting for food in shallow waters) and lost fur to make them easier to swim, float and dry afterwards.

Mochizuki Tadayoshi: regarding sensation yes! I can say if there's an tiny ant crawling on my hand or leg using the hairs and best of all whenever I get goosebumps on my beard it feels so awesome

Renee Aquino: Imagine how soft hugging each other would be awhhh

bose sebi: Hair is in arm pits, to reduce inflammation as result of constant friction. And in crutches it also reduces friction - stickiness.

LifeLoveDreamMusic: Great animation!

Misha Tacke: Can anybody explain to me why a normally haired ape would mate with an ape that has a coincidental mutation with less hair. With other animals, the animals that look different get expelled from their groups (for example tigers with a skin condition) not having the chance to mate.

꧄𒈙𒁏𒀰𒌧𒌧𒈙t𒀱꧄𒀰꧄𒈙꧄𒈙꧄𒈙𒈙𒀰𒀰𒈙꧄꧄𒈙𒁏𒀰𒌧𒌧𒈙t𒀱꧄𒀰꧄𒈙꧄𒈙꧄𒈙𒈙𒀰𒀰𒈙꧄: Also this video forgot to mention that eyebrows help stop moisture such as rain or sweat from dripping down into our eyes from our heads

Yubio: We’re mutant monke that know how to make mouth noises and build tools.

AnaMas: Wantastic! May I ask what software was used to create this animation?