My idea of writing blogs about interesting topics is far more difficult than expected. I continue to have “blog worthy” topics aplenty, four or five a day. Sometimes I make notes of them for future reference (and then lose the notes), sometimes I actually start writing them (such as a partially completed one on the topic of what mistakes did the writers of the Constitution make that allow for the current behavior of the President). My unwritten blogs are frustrating to me, but it seems that I would need another “me” to find the time necessary to get to them all. Maybe I make them too long, thereby taking too much time to write – but in reality the topics deserve much more than I give as it is.
Today I am going to attempt a short, and kind of silly, discussion about hair.
The other day I noticed a young lady with a braid reaching down to her butt – I am sure she would sit on it if not careful. On the same day I saw a guy with a big beard reaching to about his belly button. Both of these observations got me to wondering how having such long hair could come about. How could evolution create such an odd state of affairs?
As we all known, humans have several different types of hair – most of which might be better described as “sparse (sometime not so sparse) fur” – hair that only grows to a given length and then stops. While this hair has different characteristics depending upon location on our body, it seems to be self-limiting in length. Arm pit hair, arm hair, chest hair are all different – but limited in length. I am not sure about beards. Beards get quite long, but are usually limited to somewhere between 12 to 36 inches, most commonly about 14 inches. (The longest recorded beard was 18.6 feet long!!) Head hair, however, is quite different.
If left to fend for itself, head hair grows to a length of several feet before it breaks or falls out as the follicle ages. I have seen women with hair dragging behind them on the floor! I am not sure, and couldn’t find a reliable reference, but I suspect our head hair can easily reach to our knees and beyond. I think this is a really odd situation. I am unaware of any other animal having anywhere near this long of hair/fur. Some animals get pretty shaggy looking, but not so much that the hair could become a significant – potentially life threatening – problem.
The only reason that it is manageable for humans is the presence of our highly dexterous hands and clever minds. We make tools to cut our hair, find ways to wrap and tie it out of the way, or create devices to hold our contain it. If we didn’t have our dexterous hands and smart minds we would be severely hampered by our over abundance of head hair. So how does this happen genetically? There are a few animals that are so “over endowed” with sexual displays (primarily birds) that they seriously hampered in their daily lives – it appears that people fall into that category. Perhaps being able to grow so much hair means that that individual is somehow more “fit” than those that can’t.
I don’t have any thoughts to offer about this odd state of affairs other than it seems a rather odd trait to have evolve through the slow process of genetic selection. I wonder how baldness might fit into the picture. Why are we all bald? It seems that generally the story of the development of any given trait can be described in semi-logical terms. The new trait provides an advantage with regard to passing on the gene(s) responsible for that new trait to future generations. What is it about long hair that overshadows the negative repercussions associated with it? It seems that long head hair is only viable in combination with our basic human capabilities – requiring a specific set of characteristics to be a viable option. That means our species acquired a smart enough mind to manage their hair before it could evolve. For example, chimpanzees aren’t smart enough to make the tools necessary to manage long hair, therefore they have short hair. I wonder about our cousins the Neanderthals, did they have long hair too?