Why do we have hair?

ItalianBabe2

Hair helpes clog the pores snd protects poisions and such from toxicating your body. HIH! Nov 25 06, 6:34 PM

Baloo55th

Clogged pores you don't want. Hair is what's left of the fur that our distant ancestors had. Some of it is still in place (in odd places) for its smell retaining capabilities. We don't use that now - preferring to be deodorised (well, most of us...) - but it's not an evolutionary disadvantage so it stays. In fact, there is hair over virtually the whole skin area - except for the palms of the hands, soles of the feet and one or two other bits - even on the head of a bald man. It's mostly fine and hard to see (or shaved off), but in some peoples like the Ainu and an Indian (Indian Indian) tribe or two it's pretty noticeable. It used to be an insulator, but we obviously evolved not to need it - or found a way round an evolutionary accident that without our brains getting bigger would have seen us off. Why do we have it? At present there's no practical reason except that it was there and doesn't tend to kill us. Esthetics come in - men tend not to prefer bald headed women (but women don't seem to mind bald headed men quite so much - or is it just that they don't start out that way...) so our ridiculously impractical head hair could be an equivalent of the ridiculous tail feathers of the peacock. Nov 25 06, 7:08 PM

zbeckabee

The hair is a part of our body's integumentary system. It serves as one of our many lines of defense. The short hairs found around the eyes, ears, nose, and eyebrows serve as our protection. The ones around the eyes, ears, and nose prevent foreign matter, such as dust, from entering the body. While the eyebrow reduces the amount of light that enter our eyes. The hair also assists in touch reception. This is why all skin surfaces possess hair, fine though they may be, except in thick areas such as the palms of the hand and soles of the feet. The hair can also serve the purpose of keeping us warm. When we feel cold our hair becomes erect and it creates extra insulation that makes our temperature rise a bit higher than our surroundings. It also traps air next to our body, thus, helping in the reduction of heat loss. Besides these, it should also be noted that to most of us, the hair possesses a cosmetic value. http://www.upd.edu.ph/~ismed/agham/archive/5th/extras/joanne/htmfiles4/purpos.htm Nov 25 06, 7:26 PM

_princess_007

In modern mammals, hair serves to insulate, to conceal, to signal, to protect, and to sense the immediate surroundings. Insulation serves to conserve heat, but also, as in the case of diurnal desert animals such as the camel, to protect against excessive heat. The color of most species is probably cryptic, matching the animal's background. In some cases, such as the dramatic stripes of zebras or tigers, cryptic coloration can only be properly evaluated when the animal is seen against its natural background. Many mammals are dark dorsally and relatively pale ventrally, a pattern called countercoloration. Hair also provides by its color a means of signaling other members of one's own species (e.g., the white tail of the white-tailed deer, flashed by a fleeing animal to signal danger) or members of other species (e.g., the contrasting pattern of striped skunks, a warning to predators). The pelage also serves to protect the skin from abrasion and from excessive UV radiation. And, through specialized vibrissae, it provides a tactile sense, used, for example, to locate prey or to navigate in total darkness. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/topics/mammal_anatomy/hair.html Nov 25 06, 8:03 PM