{"id":738,"date":"2003-06-17T03:44:42","date_gmt":"2003-06-17T03:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:34:35","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:34:35","slug":"naked-apes-bug-free-and-sexy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=738","title":{"rendered":"naked apes: bug-free and sexy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Hairy humans just aren&#8217;t sexy, report British  researchers in the Royal Society&#8217;s <em>Biology Letters<\/em> last week. That&#8217;s the  reason why humans are hairless, instead of furry like almost all other  mammals. The old theory of human hairlessness supposes that we lost our  body hair to keep cool in hot climates, but Mark Pagel of the University  of Reading and Walter Bodmer of Oxford University challenge that  assumption. They believe humans became hairless to reduce the amount of  disease-carrying parasites that live in fur and to enhance sexual  attractiveness. Because humans could respond to their environment by  producing shelters and clothing, hairlessness was both possible and  desirable since clothing and shelters can be cleaned more easily than  fur when infested with bugs. Pagel stated in a press release:  &#8220;Hairlessness would have allowed humans to convincingly &#8216;advertise&#8217;  their reduced susceptibility to parasitic infection and this trait  therefore became desirable in a mate.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 6\/17\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hairy humans just aren&#8217;t sexy, report British researchers in the Royal Society&#8217;s Biology Letters last week. That&#8217;s the reason why humans are hairless, instead of furry like almost all other mammals. The old theory of human hairlessness supposes that we &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=738\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1182,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}